


From Grace

by CazBunny



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Academy phase, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ashen Wolves are here now, Azure Moon - Freeform, But only kind of spoliers because I'm not really getting into everything that went down, Canon Continuation, F/F, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Cindered Shadows DLC Spoilers, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Lots of side relationships, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Smut, Psychological Horror, Slow Romance, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, War Phase, White Clouds, dimileth, dimyleth, mildly AU, spoilers for all routes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2020-09-28 08:01:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 68,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20422607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CazBunny/pseuds/CazBunny
Summary: In war, everyone becomes the worst version of themselves. Some completely unhinge. Some can never wash the blood from their hands. But it is not the atrocities committed that make a man, but what, and who, comes after. As he embarks on the journey to forgive himself, Dimitri learns that a fall from grace does not always have to be undertaken alone.





	1. Mangled Bait

**I: White Clouds**

A week has passed since the murder of Jeralt Eisner, blade breaker and former captain of the Knights of Seiros. It has been just as long since Byleth has last been seen outside her chambers. Her teaching duties have been pawned off onto Catherine and Seteth who have taken turns lecturing and training the students of the Blue Lion house. It is evident that they are trying their best, but it is just as evident that they do not have the same affinity for teaching as Byleth.

Despite himself, Dimitri dozes during Seteth’s bland teachings and struggles to match up to Catherine’s ridiculous expectations. From what he can tell, he is not alone in his difficulties. Sylvain has sulked throughout every class after Catherine threatened to have him ejected from the academy. Felix has stormed out of two group training sessions with Seteth. Annette has taken to wearing a brace from the strain of taking so many exhaustive notes. Mercedes has brought cupcakes to every class as a consolation for the awful lectures, but the sweets go untouched. No one dares to answer any questions or participate in class. They have all retreated into their respective selves. In a way, their isolation is a show of solidarity with their grieving professor.

Annette has arranged a group study session to understand the mind-numbing complexities of Catherine’s intricate technique for their exam tomorrow. Dimitri is the only Blue Lion not in attendance. His nightmares have been growing steadily worse. Keeping up with his studies is the least of his concerns. He spends all his free time battling his ghosts in the arena until his exhaustion gets the best of him.

This night is no different. He hacks at training dummies until they lay in strewn heaps across the floor. He has been asked incessantly to refrain from demolishing the dummies, but his rage always gets the better of him. In the moments when his emotions untether, his strength manifests beyond his hands. He annihilates everything in his path. It has been months since he has sparred with a partner. Too often, he finds himself hungering for the hum of battle and the sting of blood on his tongue.

As Dimitri strikes down the remaining dummy, a vision of his father’s murder streaks through his memory. He throws his lance to the ground and knuckles his eyes until the memory fades. All he can muster is a whimpered, “Please.”

When it finally passes, he looks upon the destruction he has created and flees. He does not return his weapon to the rack.

Outside, the fiery pink hues of dusk burn through his skin and set his soul ablaze. He sweats, but it fails to cool him. Ghosts claw at the shell of his skull. They stir his blood until it scalds. He is drowning upright. He is only seventeen.

Hushed conversations drift on the stale wind. He passes a trio of whispering friends. They giggle behind flat palms. He does not recognize them, but they wave. They bat their eyelashes and puff their lips. Their stares burrow beneath his temples and then he is walking so fast he is nearly running. He can barely breathe, yet he cannot stop moving. The dormitory rooms are blurs in his periphery. His feet move to an unheard command, spurring him towards the steps that will lead to the second floor, to the privacy of his room in which he can come completely undone.

As the pieces and pawns of the evil that has haunted him for so long reveal themselves, it is getting worse. The anxiety. The pains. The voices. _He_ is getting worse. 

Ingrid has voiced her concern. Sylvain has voiced his concern. Annette, Mercedes, Ashe, even Felix, who refuses to call him anything but a boar, has voiced their concern. They are all concerned by what they do not see. If they saw the truth of him, they would not be concerned. They would be horrified. He is a husk of human being. More of him slinks away with each day.

Dedue is the worst of them all, constantly telling of herbs to remedy afflictions of the mind, even offering to retrieve some from the Archbishop personally, but Dimitri is unwilling to entertain the notion. His affliction is not of the mind, but of the soul.

It is as Dimitri begins to descend the steps towards the greenhouse that he catches sight of her. She is standing at the end of the dock, holding a fishing rod between both her hands. It is a strange twist of fate. If he had descended the other side of the steps, closest to the dormitory, he never would have spied her.

Byleth is free of her typical accouterments. She wears only a thin shirt and grass stained pants. Her hip is free of the Sword of the Creator. For a moment, he is certain that he has impressed her image onto another woman. She looks nothing like the awe-inspiring warrior he knows her to be. She looks just like everyone else.

Dimitri watches from the top of the steps as she reels in her line. When she pulls it out of the water, he sees that it is devoid of a hook. He watches her rub at her face. He hears her curse. The sun is to her back. It adorns her with a halo of gold. Looking at her now in such repose conjures his notions of her when they first met; otherworldly, inhuman, ethereal.

Something twinges within the cavern of his chest. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t soothe either. It simply is.

The steps slap against his boots as he takes them two at a time. He rushes towards the dock. A bird chitters and chides. He thinks better of his pace and slows. He stops. The dining hall is just behind him. Its windows are dark and glossy, yet vapid concern pierces his lungs. In the color of his mind, he can imagine Dorothea’s face smushed up against the gloomy glass and her twinkling eyes at the sight of him rushing to Byleth’s side. Then, he pictures Sylvain beside her and develops a stomachache.

The two have been relentless ever since someone had let slip that Dimitri met their professor atop the Goddess Tower the night of the ball. Sylvain has been giving him inane tips in the art of flirtation. Dorothea wants to write an opera. Both are so enamored by a fiction that they refuse to listen to the truth. Nothing happened that night.

Dimitri considers fleeing, but the fishkeeper is eyeing him. The man juts his thumb to the array of rods and gathered bait on the table beside him. Dimitri shakes his head. The man raises his eyebrows. He jerks his thumb towards the dock with pursed lips. Dimitri’s face blisters into a blush and his shoulders creep up to his ears. The fishkeeper doesn’t smile, but his mirth ekes out into the wrinkles around his eyes.

“Best not keep her waiting, your highness,” the fishkeeper says with a demure bow of his head.

Dimitri rubs his forehead. He detests that everyone comes to the same, wrong conclusion. Condolences are his only concern in approaching her. Of course, he has already given them with a compounded promise of joint revenge, but knows from his own experience that they are easily forgotten.

Squinting into the setting sun, he steps onto the dock. He is unprepared for it to sway beneath his feet. Up close, he can see that the wood is worn and in desperate need of repairs. His stomach seizes as the current reverberates up through his knees. Moving water is something he avoids, preferring the stagnation of pools and ponds to the unpredictable whims of moving bodies.

“Hello, Dimitri,” Byleth says. Her level voice, so similar in tambour to the drone of the monastery bells, abates his momentary worry. She squats beside a small box. Her body hides its contents from his sight. Jingles ring out as she rummages through it.

“Hello,” he says. “How are you?”

Whatever she desired, she has found for she stands and brandishes a hook in her hand. When she turns to him, she keeps her head hung low and looks out from underneath her lashes. The expression is guarded, but it does nothing to hide the red tint to her puffy eyes.

“Still here,” she says.

A rod made of colorless wood and covered in petty scratches juts from her hand. There are two blue splotches at the bottom, resembling hastily made handprints. At her feet is a newer, lacquered rod, but its line is wrapped tight and untouched.

“Sometimes that is all you can do,” he says.

She hums low in her throat. Her fingers work over the line and knot it through the eye of a hook. The breeze carries the stink of fish.

“Have you come for a reason?” she asks. She stoops low and plucks a fat, squirming worm from a can beside the box.

“I wanted to—”

The hook pokes into her thumb. She curses and pulls her hand away. The worm falls to the dock. Blood wells in the wound. Her blood drips. It stains the wood and the worm with a crimson flare. Dimitri’s eyesight turns fuzzy. The ground sways beneath him. The water slaps at the dock. It is black as moonless night.

“I’m sorry,” Byleth says. He focuses on her and the fuzzy outline of the sun around her. She sucks on her injured finger like a child nursing a papercut. “You were saying?”

“I wanted to see how you were doing,” he says and speaking banishes the encroaching dark. “How you are truly doing.”

Her thumb still parts her teeth, but her lips have gone still around it. She shakes the rod at him.

“This was my father’s.”

She says nothing else and he feels like a fool. Of course, it is her father’s. How many times has he ventured by to see father and daughter fishing side by side? Nearly every night, dinner had featured the option of fish, fresh-caught by the Eisners. Ashe had called them the scourge of the aquatic. Sylvain had often waxed poetic about how he sympathized with the plight of Byleth’s trophies, having been hooked in a similar fashion. Byleth had grown to smile at the off-kilter rhyme, Dimitri remembers. But he doubts she ever will again.

“After, Duscur,” he says without much thought, needing to remedy her empty, scooped-out expression. “I spent two days in my father’s closet, among his clothing. He left other things behind, but his clothes smelled the most like him. I did not eat or drink or sleep. I thought if I waited long enough, he would return...”

A chill ruffles his spine as he trails off. There are a few details he decides not to share. Like how he’d wept and shrieked every time the attendants attempted to remove him. Or how he’d broken the wrist of one of the attendants when they’d tried to remove him by force. Or how he’d crushed a wayward rat beyond recognition with his bare hands. Or how he’d gouged deep, bloody ruts into his arms to quell the screaming in his head and how, only when he’d fallen unconscious from the blood loss, had they been able to drag him out.

Byleth closes her eyes and the dark smudges beneath them become all the more noticeable. The rod trembles in her grasp. Her fingers are white at the knuckles.

“Does it ever get easier?” she asks. 

To another, he might have lied. But not to her.

“Never,” he says.

Her head dips in a solemn nod. Her brow furrows and her lips press together and he fears she might cry.

But she doesn’t. She sighs with her body. When she bares her eyes to him once more, no grief glimmers in the corners.

"Will you bait the hook?” she asks. She flattens her hand up against an invisible wall and he can see a smattering of fresh scabs dotting her fingers and palm. “I’m sick of stabbing myself.” 

He agrees. She hands him the rod and then stoops down to retrieve the worm. She wipes it against her shirt so that it leaves a gooey, bloody trail. When she drops it into his hand, it is clean of blood except in a few wrinkles of its fatty body.

Almost immediately, he fumbles with the hook and the worm falls through his fingers. It squirms on the splintered wood of the dock until Byleth scoops it into her hand. A flicker of bemusement dances in her eyes and lifts the corners of her lips. Heat crawls up from the back of his neck so he massages it. He looks to the horizon and hopes for the blaring sun to boil the embarrassment from the veins.

“You’ve never fished before, have you?” Byleth asks.

There’s no point in asking her how she can tell. He’s always been atrocious at hiding his uncertainty.

“No. Most of the rivers near Fhirdiad are too monstrous or frozen for fishing,” he says. 

“I’ll help you,” she says as she takes the hook from him. She spears the worm through its side and then laces it quivering, bleeding body round and round the hook until it has no hope of ever escaping. She returns it to him once the worm is thoroughly dead.

“Cast it out,” she says.

Though he’s passed by the pond enough to know what he should do, he hesitates. He fears catching the hook in her hair or snapping her father’s rod in a gust of uncontrolled strength.

The rod is taken from him in silence. It is these moments of silence that he likes best about her. She never fills the dead air with empty words. Her silence gives him peace of mind.

The reel hisses as she spins it until the line is slack. Then, she whips the rod so that the line arcs over their heads. After she has sent the hook sailing into the water, she hands the rod to him. He takes it without question. The gentle current of the water buoys the line.

“And now we wait,” she says and she flops down onto the edge of the dock. Her short legs dangle just above the water. She shoves the box of fishing gear aside and pats the space beside her. It is difficult to sit while clutching the rod, but he manages. He does not hang his legs over the side as she does. His would surely plunge beneath the surface and he has never enjoyed getting his feet wet.

Byleth leans back over her hands. She shakes her head so that her hair hangs loose and free over her shoulders. He stares out over the rippling water instead of into the flecks of gold in her irises.

“Do you remember the fishing tournament?” she asks. The breeze rustles his bangs into his eyes so he blows them away with a huff before he says, “I remember Ingrid complaining that you bested her by an embarrassingly large margin.”

“I wouldn’t say it was embarrassingly large,” she protests, but her eyes boast a twinkling of pride. It has been a slow process, but, little by little, she has opened up to him. Or he has gotten better at reading her. He isn’t sure which is closer to the truth.

“I caught this massive fish, bigger than I’ve caught before, or after. And I was so excited."

Dimitri imagines her with a look of impish excitement but dislikes the way her face contorts in his mind’s eye. Her excitement is surely more subtle, he thinks. Perhaps, a flush of color across her cheeks or a sparkle in her eye, and maybe, if she were truly exhilarated, the hint of a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“So I rushed to tell my father and I remember holding up my hands to show him the size—” In tandem with her story, she leans forward and spreads her hands a good distance from each other. “—and he just laughs and pries them further apart and says, ‘Let me know when you catch one this big.’”

Her expectant stare cues him to laugh. It isn’t that the story lacks humor, but that he hasn’t laughed on his own since he was a child. If he wasn’t expected to maintain a healthy social life, he wouldn’t laugh at all. But laughter is one of the few things that sets Byleth apart from the others. With her, he doesn’t mind forcing up a laugh, especially if it conjures one of her elusive smiles. In fact, there are a lot of things he doesn’t mind doing to elicit her smile.

She smiles now and he takes the sight of her, smiling and resplendent in the setting sun, and bandages it over the gaping chasm within his chest. He rationalizes it as a memory of a time when his presence did not bring another sorrow.

The sounds of the merchants closing up their shops swell over the water. Dimitri listens to the shuffle of feet and the slam of windows until the soft whisper of slumber catches his ear. At his side, Byleth has fallen asleep, sitting straight up.

Soon, the sun has curved below the horizon and Byleth has curved with it. She leans against his shoulder. Her hair spills over his back. There is the tiniest hint of a bow in her lips. He sits stiff and still. He is certain that if he moves, she will wake. She looks peaceful. She smells like a meadow of lilacs, rich and earthen.

He wants to dart away, and he wants to stay. He knows he does not deserve such simplistic intimacy. Especially from her.

But his eyelids gain weight. His head droops. He loses track of his hands. His breaths come slow and smooth. The breeze coming off the water is a lullaby. It envelops him until he is warm and content.

And then there is a nibble on the line.

Dimitri yanks up. He flings his arm up to the heavens. The rod goes with it. A fish, silver as steel, rockets from the water, tethered to the end of the line. It crosses before the setting sun in a mockery of an eclipse. The rod snaps clean in two. Dimitri’s mouth fills with sour dread. The fish sails over his head and falls to the dock with a watery slap. 

Byleth jerks awake. She nearly knocks him into the pond as she scrambles after the fish. She scoops it into her hands. It is silver and glinting as it jerks against her fingers. Its eyes are a bulbous black. Its mouth puckers open and closed. To Dimitri, it looks like it is screaming.

Half of Jeralt’s rod lies at Byleth’s feet. The other half is trapped within the mashing of his fingers. Shame spasms his fingers and the wood splinters.

“This is… I can’t…” Byleth stammers. She looks from the fish to him and then back again. Her fingers strain pale against the fish’s slimy scales.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean… It’s difficult to—"

“No, it’s not that,” she interrupts. She eases the hook from the fish’s mouth. Blood dribbles along the fissures of its scale. “It’s a platinum fish. My father always wanted to catch one.”

The quiver of a smile shimmers through the usual mask of her face.

“This is a sign,” she says.

Dimitri clenches his teeth. In all the ways he’s tried to honor the unjustly dead, he has never received any such sign. Yet, Byleth receives a rare catch on her first attempt. Despair comes easily. She is right in saying the fish is a sign— it is a sign of her divinity and his damnation. 

“Share it with me?” Byleth asks. She jiggles the gasping fish towards him.

Her question rings hesitant, but her face is smooth and unbothered. He feels his own grow hot. It is a simple request, but it twists inside him to a place deeper than his brief frustration.

There is potential in her proposal. In her joyful company, it would be easy to ignore his own faults. He can imagine himself sharing the fish with her, admiring the finesse of her hand as she debones it, standing clear as she grills it over the fire, watching the light of the flames liquify the heavy bags beneath her eyes, lying about the taste of it, saying he enjoys it thoroughly,

And maybe he would walk her back to her quarters. Maybe he would thank her again for the treat. Maybe he would relish the sight of her beneath the watery moonlight. Maybe he would realize there was truth in Sylvain’s constant, unrelenting teasing. Maybe he did feel something beyond respect for her. Maybe she felt the same. Maybe she would take his hand and he would take hers. And maybe she would blush and say, “I wish I was another student here and not a professor.” And maybe he would kiss her.

Maybe. But probably not.

Starring into the mire of her stone-gray eyes, he realizes that he has found relief in Byleth’s absence these past few weeks. She has become an uncomfortable reality in his life, a desire he knows much better than to have.

"I… Seteth assigned an arduous reading,” he says. He curls his toes inside the heavy leather of his boots to stomach the sting of lying.

“Ah, of course,” she says, and the glitter in her eyes grows dull. In her hands, the fish has stopped squirming. “Another time, then.”

Dimitri nods and then he leaves. As he climbs the steps to the nobles’ dormitory, his mouth sags and his hands will not be coaxed from tightly held fists.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! I have fallen completely and utterly in love with Three Houses. It is everything I wanted out of Fates, but didn't get! All of the characters are stunning in their own regards (except for Lorenz because he has a "may I speak to your manager" haircut lol) and I devoted all my free time to the Blue Lions. Don't get me wrong, Black Eagles and Golden Deer are absolutely fabulous as well, but no one can touch my boy Dimitri Alexandre Blaidyyd (and Edelgard apparently doesn't even get a full route so WTF is up with that?). I really wanted to try to create something that captures all the angst I felt (and imagined lol) in regards to the story as I played so here it is! I'm not entirely sure where this will lead (as I don't have everything entirely mapped out yet), but I hope you will enjoy the ride with me! I love comments more than life so feel free to drop one to let me know what you think! You can also find me on Tumblr at CazBunnyWrites if you're feeling spicy and want to discuss more in depth why Blue Lion is the best house lol! <3<3<3


	2. The Night Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last class meeting before the invasion of Garreg Mach.

The Flame Emperor’s hand has been revealed and her army marches on Garreg Mach. The forward scouts predict the might of Empire will be upon them come sun up. The fortifications have been raised. The students are well aware and well prepared for the fight ahead, but know that it will be different from their skirmishes against faceless bandits and thieves. This will be a fight against peers they broke bread beside and friends they did not get to exchange goodbyes with. 

“What do we do, Professor?” Mercedes asks. Her hands are clasped over her heart and her gaze is fixed on the floor. She has been in a constant state of prayer since that night in the Holy Tomb. The pious sight of her makes Dimitri sick.

“We kill them,” he says. His voice comes out like a distant thunderclap, all fury and threat. He is done repressing the beast within. He could not shove it back even if he so desired.

The Blue Lions stand in a semicircle around their professor and they all shudder at his proclamation. Byleth is the only one who gives no reaction. She only stares with her new eyes like stained glass. Everything about her looks different, but she has not changed at all. Reality has been torn asunder. War is on the horizon. The wrongful dead wail for their tribute. And she appears completely unphased by it all. Not even a blessing from the Goddess can break through her mask.

“What? How can you say that?” Annette cries and Dimitri realizes he has lost himself in the unwavering placidity of his professor’s face.

“If you are unwilling, then you should have fled with the merchants,” he says. His arms are a tourniquet over the acid hate in his chest. It bleeds through easily, but he does not let it all drain out. The full wrath of it is for Edelgard alone.

“And the boar finally reveals itself,” Felix mutters.

Dimitri does not stiffen at the moniker as he has in the past. For the first time, he cannot deny that it is a fitting title. After all, only a wild beast could enjoy the sensation of a man’s skull shattering between its fingers.

Byleth stares at him. There’s a crinkle to her lips that doesn’t last beyond a quick shimmer. He does not shy away from her gaze, but he doesn’t meet it either. The pinnacle of her head, where her hair flows like seafoam, draws his eye while she continues to stare and stare.

“Tomorrow will be difficult, but we cannot hold back. If Edelgard wants a war, we have no choice but to give it to her,” she says and still she stares. It is rude, unbearably so. He knows she has been raised beyond civilization and beyond manners, but she has proven herself to be adept at picking up on social cues. Yet she stares at him unabashedly, no matter how he molds his face in disdain.

Felix draws her attention with a pointed question about defensive maneuvers for the battle tomorrow. When he’s free of her, Dimitri turns to Dedue and finds an expression equal to the one he’s just been released from. The weight of Dedue’s dedication has become insufferable. Each day is a new torment of lectures about what he should be eating and how long he should be sleeping and why he should be taking medicine and doesn’t he see that he’s only hurting himself? No matter how Dimitri protests, Dedue does not let up. If anything, his protests only enhance Dedue’s mother-hen nature.

“Please, get some rest,” Byleth says, her conversation with Felix over. “You will need all your strength for tomorrow.”

Nobody speaks. In the filtered dusk, she looks like a lost saint, forgotten to the whims of time. Divinity is etched into the very soul of her being. It had lain dormant in the time before she cleaved the sky asunder, he knows, but it is unignorable now that her form has been remodeled in the visage of the Goddess.

“Dismissed,” she says.

The dismissal moves through the group like a ripple in water. Sylvain is the first to leave, folding his arms behind his head and offering a chipper goodbye that clashes with his wary frown, followed by Felix, then Ingrid, and then the rest.

Dimitri moves to follow, but Dedue wavers in his path, hindering his escape like a felled log across a forest path. Liquid sunlight catches in the gold heart dangling from Dedue’s earlobe. It flashes and blinds.

“Dimitri?” Byleth asks. “Will you stay a moment longer?”

And then Dedue is gone, melting like mist into the twilight. His heavy footsteps do not disturb the settling silence as his hulking shadow slithers away. There is unparalleled grace in his huge mass that Dimitri cannot help but to watch. 

“I know it has been hard for you,” Byleth says.

Hedging around the issue has never been her style, as it is for most. Once, her bluntness had been refreshing, but now he can only scoff.

“Dedue put you up to this,” he says as he turns to glare.

"Yes, but I was planning to speak with you regardless.” A frown mangles the calm of her mouth. Discomfort has become a staple for her as emotionlessness once was. Events of the past week seem to have made the expression easier for her.

Behind her, the sunlight is dying. Motes of dust shimmer in the weakening rays as a cold breeze sweeps through the classroom. Strands of lank hair hiss across the bridge of his nose.

“Speak.”

The brusque command strips the varnish from her eyes and, for a glimmering moment, he hears himself laughing and shattering the porcelain mask of the Flame Emperor beneath his foot, sees himself lunging at Edelgard, screaming at Edelgard, launching his lance at Edelgard, feels himself slipping through steady hands and plunging into the uncertain abyss; all within the emerald of her eyes. 

But then it is gone and the shield rises again beneath the rind of her flesh. She is as impassive as ever, a stone fashioned into the likeness of a woman, when she says, “You are letting your lust for revenge corrupt who you are.”

This is not the first time the sentiment has been expressed to him. Dedue has taken him aside at every opportunity to suggest the same. But they are both wrong. He has never been more himself.

“And?”

A lament of his supposedly degraded morality or the risk to his royal ascension is his expectation, having endured infinite variations of both from Dedue, but he receives neither.

“And it frightens me.”

Not concerns. Not worries. Frightens.

And she lets him see it, furrows her brow and slants her mouth and permits her eyes to simmer with the possibility of unshed tears. The Ashen Demon has retreated and a frightened woman has taken its place.

The cathedral bells ring out, heralding the coming night. They sing a simple tune that mimics the melody of a lullaby he has long forgotten until falling silent once more. Once, the holy air of the monastery had carried the chance of penance. Now, it only stifles. 

Byleth’s lips purse on the verge of new articulation, but he speaks over her intentions and says, “That is rich coming from the woman who led her class into battle against certain death for the chance of revenge.”

He watches her arms fold over her chest and hug tight so that her sleeves strain against the coiled muscle beneath. Her hair hangs loose and limp over her face. In the dimming light, she is aged to the point of pity.

“I was going to resign,” she says. She delivers her words in a strict meter and the restraint in her voice makes his fingers curl. She shares nothing with anyone, least of all him. Her secrets are her own. He does not want them. “I packed up my room, drafted a formal letter. But Rhea begged me to stay. When I refused, she threatened you.”

A week ago, the notion of holding enough worth to Byleth to justify a threat might have made his thoughts swoon. But whatever feelings he may have harbored went up in flames at the weight of Byleth’s hand on his shoulder, pulling him back, restraining him from his destiny, ignoring the whims of the dead. 

“Am I supposed to be flattered?” he sneers.

“No,” she says. “I made a mistake. It almost cost me my life and countless others. I would not do it again if given the chance.”

But she is lying. He can see it in the jut of her chin and the clench of her jaw. It is the very same tension he sees in his own reflection by candlelight, after the nightmares have torn him from the comfort of sleep.

She is hungry for revenge, just as he is. And she will starve without it.

Gesticulating wildly to herald the intensity of his coming words, his hands take on a life of their own. He demands, “Do you not wish to strike down every single one that had a hand in his death?”

“Yes, but—”

“And you cannot live with yourself knowing that they still infect the world with their depravity.”

She does not meet his gaze, but looks instead to the vaulted ceiling above. Cobwebs drip from the beams like blood from a broken nose. His euphoric mania withers in uncertainty.

“I have to believe there is more to life then avenging every single injustice in the world,” she says. “There is more to _your _life, Dimitri,”

His hands turn to fists. His mouth becomes full of stinging nettles as his face flushes with horrid heat. She is mistaken. He has no life to call his own.

“Jeralt deserves better. You are a disgrace to his name.”

The demons speak through him, accusing her of his own misgivings and faltering convictions. But it wounds her just as it wounds him.

Beneath the hurt, he finds fascination in watching a flicker of pain twitch across the desert of her face. It is akin to watching light filter through the cathedral in the moments before daybreak, hauntingly beautiful.

“Get out,” she says.

It is his turn to stare to the extreme of social reproach. He presses his lips into a thin blade as the vitriol of her command soaks in.

“I won’t repeat myself,” she says.

Her voice is reminiscent of Felix’s, but with the added tonal quality of a wound rubbed raw. He doesn’t press her. He turns for the door.

Just before leaving, he steals a glance back at her. She sits on her desk. Her feet dangle. One toe traces the floor. Mossy hair blocks the stoop of her head and her slim hands mask the light of her eyes. There comes a wet sucking breath that shudders through her shoulders and all at once, he wants to apologize. But he doesn’t. Words are wasted on the living.

Outside, the winter air is unforgiving. Within seconds, it saps moisture from the meat of his face until his skin burns. Smooth leather soothes the sting as he covers his face with his gloved hands. The swirling night calls to him as he stares into it between forked fingers. Faces leer from brick and tree alike. Some resemble those he loved as he knew them. Others are merely skeletal remains of those he cannot recall.

“Are you okay?” a timid voice asks from the shadows. He turns and sees Annette lingering like a ghost beside the classroom entrance. Without asking, he knows she has stayed behind to bend the professor’s ear, a question surely sparking like lightning inside that obsessive skull of hers, but the sight of her infuriates him.

Stiffening his spine and dropping his hands, he commands, “You heard nothing.”

His words are bared teeth and her concern shatters into liquid fear. She quivers back into the dark. He walks away with the cowering sight of her impressed into his eyelids. The feeling is interlocked pride and shame.

Voices mutter against the howling wind. They whisper of recompense and foregone glory. Each word nestles into the hollow of his chest, bolstering his resolve. Though the living try to convince him otherwise, he is on the right path. Tomorrow, he will have Edelgard’s head to satisfy the dead. And he will finally sleep soundly beneath the blessings of the departed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all!!!!! I hope you will enjoy reading this chapter as much as I did writing it! Don't get me wrong, I certainly want the best for Dimitri, but boy, dark and brooding Dimitri is really interesting to write!  
I've nailed down the plot and figured out just how many chapters this story is gonna take so yay for planning ahead!! This story will continue past the canon ending of Azura Moon since I wasn't satisfied with a lot of things and i have many ideas swirling around in my noggin.'  
Also, I finally finished all the routes (what is sleep lol?) and I have to say that Blue Lions is officially my favorite with Golden Deer as a close second. I really feel like Edelgard got ripped off in a lot of ways and therefore I couldn't truly enjoy her route, but I digress. I would still die for the Black Eagles though. I recruited the shit out of them in my definitive Blue Lion playthrough lol.  
Feel free to comment or reach out as you see fit! Thank y'all again for investing the time in reading!!!! <3  
EDIT: Not sure exactly why the formatting got wonky for a hot sec but I believe I've corrected it.


	3. Interlude I

Five years is a long time to spend in hell. In the wilderness, time passes without reason. It is night and then it is day and then it is night again, but everything in between is glossy and unreal.

In the day, Dimitri feeds off the land, taking sustenance where he can find it, and offers tribute to the ghosts that stalk his every step. His nights are spent in communion with the long moldering dead. He promises them their vengeance, but no matter the bodies he stacks for them, they only grow hungrier.

Thoughts of the past, of his academy days, are kept buried. If they do emerge, in moments when the world is quiet, he remembers only the bittersweet things: Ingrid’s forlorn smile at the reminder of Glenn, Mercedes’ sewing needles bent in half, Sylvain’s biting laugh at the question of a burial for Miklan, Dedue’s flowers in bloom, Annette’s glittering stare at the suggestion of Gilbert, Byleth’s hand on his shoulder, trying and failing to pull him back from the brink.

Beyond those flashes, he keeps everything else shoved into the places of his mind that he cannot reach. There is only space for thoughts of survival and killing. Even Dedue’s death, which drove him out into the wild to begin with, is a passing memory, one that he only sees in the grips of a nightmare.

Of his time spent alone, he remembers only the blood he sheds, the monsters he kills, and the loss of his eye.

It was broad daylight, not even near nightfall. It was hot, unbearably hot. The Imperial scouting party lay like slaughtered deer around his feet. His father stood amid the carnage, a crimson slash across his throat, and his old riding instructor beside him, her head in her hands, blonde hair streaked through with red hanging like the leaves of a willow between her fingers. And it hadn’t been a new sight, but on that day, that hot, unbearably hot, day it had been too much.

It had been a simple thing to render his eye to jelly. And even as he had writhed in the bloody dirt among the freshly murdered, the dead were unquiet. They wanted more. If he had remained alert, he might have given it to them, might have gouged out the other eye, might have ripped out his own throat.

When he returns to the monastery, it is a twist of accidental destiny. The rats masquerading as men made camp there, so he followed. It was only natural; a predator on the scent of its prey. 

They hardly put up a fight and he fells them without breaking a sweat. And then he rests at the top of the stairs, waiting for the scurry of more vermin, but it never sounds. There is only the creep of footsteps on the aged steps. And then she emerges without ceremony or sound.

When she fell, when the battlefield descended into a bloodbath, he was not there, not even conscious. His bloodlust had ended in a concussion and a broken wrist. They’d restrained him when they broke the news, kept him tethered to a cot like a dog on a leash.

“The professor is among the casualties,” Dedue had said. “I know she was precious to you.”

What is the last thing he said to her? He couldn’t remember then and he can’t now, but he knows it was vile, dripping in venom and hate. Even when she doesn’t appear among the horde of the dead, he still takes her death to heart. He will avenge her just like all the others because he must. If he thinks of her, it is as she was before the Goddess, with her dark hair and her ocean eyes, the way she looked that night at the Goddess Tower when he had gotten an inkling of how Sylvain could bear to waste his time chasing after women because there seemed no greater thrill than breathing in the presence of one as lovely as her. And it makes it that much harder, if he dares to think of her.

But here, in the dusty tower among still-bleeding bodies, she stands and proves to him how his memory has failed. Her hair is longer, wilder, brighter, and her eyes are tinged like a wolf’s, rivaling the moon with their luminosity. She wears no simple garment of modest fashion like she did that night, but bloodied, broken armor, damaged beyond repair. The rest of her is the same. Still small. Still slender. Still Byleth.

And he has not been Dimitri in so long, has been something, someone, else entirely. He has grown taller, broader, stronger, fiercer. Most do not recognize him. Most cower in fear. 

But she doesn’t. She stands, shrouded by the soft morning light, and offers her hand. And, for the first time in a long time, his future seems wholly uncertain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so I'm two halves a whole idiot. I cannot believe I just went a posted the entirely wrong chapter and didn't even question it. I guess this is what happens when you're working two jobs, attending school full time, and trying to get into grad school. ://///////////  
I'm really sorry and disgruntled that I did this, but I hope two chapters in a single week for the price of one (even if they were posted out of order) will ease the pain :///


	4. Savage Injury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hate breeds carelessness.

**II. Azure Moon**

The Kingdom army is on the precipice of Alliance territory en route to the Valley of Torment when they make camp in the woods, in a place Byleth claims to know well. Dimitri has every intention of remaining at camp that night and surmising the best way to separate Edelgard’s head from her fine shoulders, but the scouts report thieves and vagabonds laying waste to a nearby settlement and he must go. He must break the cycle of the strong preying upon the weak.

And it is good practice for the massacre destined to him.

Byleth trails him in silence, a poor imitation of his shadow. It has been several moons since her return that comes five years too late and she has become a bad taste in his mouth. No matter where he goes, she follows, despite his disdain, smearing her own hands with the viscera of sin on his behalf. She is a silent, unmoving reminder of what he has become and what he could have been.

“There is good in you still,” she has said in that inflectionless, echoing voice of hers. This had come after his steel façade cracks, after he screams at her to abandon all hope of returning to the past, after he reveals that he wishes every moment of every day that she had remained a specter in his memory, that she had never crawled up from the muck of the river, that she had slept forever and left him to his torment.

While he and Byleth charge headlong into battle against the marauders, the others remain in camp. Dimitri does not care that they leave the bloody business to him. In fact, he prefers it this way. He enjoys the violence and the bloodshed. It is retribution and it is freedom. The rush of death is the only power strong enough to overwhelm the singeing guilt that assails his heart.

Soon after engaging the horde of thieves, he realizes that these are not average wastrels. They carry weapons beyond the scope of petty thieves. With burning swords and flaming lances, they reap destruction with ease. The huts and the people smolder and bleed.

Still, even with their strange weapons, they are no match for him and his thirst for vengeance. Uncontrollable strength, once the bane of his childhood, has become his greatest boon. He can cleave through enemies with little effort, felling villain after villain with only a single hit. His lance draws screams from the air as Dimitri commands it to kill.

Soon, only the leader of the rats is left, cowering amid the ruins and begging for mercy.

Dimitri brings his lance back to lop off the thief’s head, but Byleth is faster. She wields the Sword of the Creator like a whip and wrenches his lance to the ground so that its tip is driven deep into the stone. Though he could rip it free with ease, he doesn’t for Byleth holds him back with a splayed hand. The curve of her fingers, so subtle and delicate, is caked in crimson grim.

“Where did you get these weapons?” Byleth asks.

“The Empire,” the thief cries and that is enough for Dimitri. His lance is up and arcing for the thief’s jugular, but there is a flash of dark magic and time becomes like glue. The thief shrieks and their arm jerks up, a weapon screeching to life in their hand, but the sound is like being underwater and the movement is slow in Dimitri’s vision. There is a pain, indescribable and crippling across his chest, and then it is gone as if it had never existed at all. He drives his lance through the thief’s neck until blood spurts and coats the ground in a heavy dusting.

Byleth has fallen in front of him. He does not recall how that has happened, but, on the hill above, he can see the plumes of Imperial knights, watching the carnage like opera spectators and he does not care how she came to fall. He is running for them.

Then he isn’t.

The world melts away in a blur of shimmering color that makes his teeth pang. When the haze clears, he stands within a dark thicket of maple, engulfed by the scent of sap and summer. There is a cabin, dilapidated and unfamiliar, in front of him. There is a babbling brook behind him. The grass is green and verdant around him. There is a splash behind him and Byleth says, “I’m sorry.”

Dimitri whirls, furious and murderous, but she has collapsed into the stream. The burbling water runs red and murky around her. Beneath the ripples, he can see the gash in her armor. It is a gaping chasm that bears her insides from hip to navel. His howling anger withers on his tongue. He does not even know how she has become so grievously wounded.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. Her voice is thinner in the middle, already weaker than before. It is the same tone she took upon their bitter reunion so few moons past.

“I was thinking of my father.”

He has no idea what she means or why she has brought them here or where here was. His fury scratches at the back of his throat, screeching to be let loose, but then her eyes, icy and endless, flitter close and she slumps into the brook. Her head dips beneath the water. Her breath ripples the surface. The stream turns her minty hair the color of jade. 

As the birds sing from swaying branches, he lifts her from the water because he knows he must. Rivets of water stream from her body, her skin, her hair, and glisten like quicksilver over his midnight armor. Her head lulls against his shoulder. Even through the shell of his armor, her warmth tingles. His lance lays forgotten on the grass.

Moving stiffly, Dimitri heads for the cabin and, though the door is locked, he is inside a few moments and two sharp kicks later. His gaze sweeps the interior and there is a collection of moldering dolls with black button eyes that stare back at him. They are huddled together in a pile of overlaid limbs. It is impossible to tell where one begins and another ends. Cobwebs adorn the roughhewn cotton of their hair. Their stitched grins are faded.

Blood ekes through the joints of his vambrace and tingles his skin with sickening warmth. He glances around the room, but there is only meager furniture and endless decay. In the center of the room, beside a tiny, rotting dining table, he lays her down. He keeps his back to the dolls, rebuking their accusations. 

He rushes to remove his gauntlets, struggling over the knotted straps, and then he flings them aside. They slam into the wall. He imagines they dent the aged wood, but he doesn’t bother to follow their trajectory. He is thinking only of her and it is a long time since he has thought so sincerely about any of the living.

He rends her armor apart with his hands. It snaps like the carapace of a crab. The skin beneath is mangled, but there is a resin around the edges left from hastily performed white magic. Her own doing, surely.

To the sound of wrenching metal, she jerks awake with a gasp. When her gaze gains focus, she says his name like a prayer. Her hand rises to grip his armored forearm. Her touch is feeble, pathetic. Her eyes eviscerate.

Blood gushes from her, mingling with the dust and turning the floor muddy red. There is a moth-eaten tablecloth strung over the table. He snatches it and the table upsets, clattering to the floor with a roar to rival a Demonic Beast’s. He wads up the cloth and presses it against her wound.

She recedes from his touch, as if she intends to burrow through the floor. Her hands latch onto his wrists. They bend the metal into his skin beneath. He does not relent until the tablecloth is soggy with the color of rust and panic begins to gnaw at his frayed nerves. The color is draining from her cheeks. Her eyes suddenly seem too large and wideset within the intricates of her face.

She is dying and he does not want her to. He has already believed her dead once and that was hard enough. This would be harder. Much harder because it would, unequivocally, be his fault.

Taking life has become as simple as breathing, but maintaining it chills him to the bone. He knows little of medicine or magic, neither having captivated his interest as a student, but now he recognizes his disinterest as just another of his devastating failures.

“What do I do?” he asks. His voice does not sound like his own. It has not been his for a long while. Nothing has.

“Cauterize it,” she says. Her teeth are white as mausoleums within the growing pallor of her face.

He guides her hand to the ruined tablecloth and pushes it down, silently instructing her to maintain pressure. She winces but does not remove her hand. He knows it is an empty attempt, but, for the moment, it placates him.

Dimitri stands. His armor creaks and groans around his joints. It has been a long time since he has maintained anything but the sharpness of his lance. His hair has grown long and wild. His face has become sharper and haggard. He can no longer bear to look at himself in a mirror.

There are logs in the fireplace, faded with age, but they catch blaze quickly after a few strikes of the flint. The sudden, blaring warmth of the fire rushes his senses and, for a moment, he is cemented in time. The heat coaxes the beast from the blackest depths. It would be so easy to kill her, to end the nuisance of her presence once and for all. What is the risk of one more ghost?

Dimitri’s hand shakes as he draws a dagger from his belt. The flames make it glow while they lick at his hand. He can hear Byleth shifting behind him, but the whispers of the damned clog his ears and stifle his concern.

When the dagger burns as hot as the sun, he pulls it from the blaze and kneels by her side. The leather hilt that normally carries the Sword of the Creator is wedged between her teeth. The relic itself lies discarded beside her head. Without her touch, it is dull and yellow as bone. 

He strips her free of the bloody tablecloth and brings the heated dagger to the weeping gash before she gives any indication that she is prepared. Her skin fizzles. The stench of burning flesh is immediate. Her shout is muffled by her self-imposed gag. The agony finds its way to him anyway. It catches him in the chest. The suffering of another has not affected him since the death of Dedue, but this, this takes hold of the wrinkled sliver that is left of his heart and squeezes tight and hard.

Byleth’s hands fist. She beats against the floor in a frenzied rhythm. He lifts the dagger free and examines his work. Her eyes roll back to the whites. Her lids twitch closed. The wound and the ravaged skin around it are as red as a fall sunset. He brings the flat of the dagger down twice more until the wound no longer bleeds.

Dimitri sheathes the dagger and sits back over his feet. The jagged metal of his boots bites into his skin at the unnatural position. The small pain numbs the whirling torment in his mind. His thoughts become actions and he goes through them in swift motions. First, he frees her from the constraints of her broken breastplate. He is careful to keep his eye from wandering over the intimacies of her figure, wrapped as they might be. There are a great many aspects of his upbringing that have corroded with his sanity, but desire is still something he resists, for propriety and decency’s sake but also because he is so unworthy.

Byleth does not wake, but her chest rises and falls in slow cadence. Her breath is weak, but it is there.

Gently, as gently as he can muster, he lifts her from the ground. She is so light and limp that holding her is like holding fog. Her skin is warm silk, fading fast, against his bare hand.

There are two small beds pushed against the back wall and he rushes to deposit her in one. He covers her in the ratty, mildewed sheets. He kicks at the hill of dolls at his feet. They tumble soundlessly into pathetic lumps across the floor. He thinks of throwing them into the fire to watch their grins dissolve, but, instead, he retrieves his lance from the grass outside. He closes the door as best he can given its broken hinges.

Dimitri relegates himself to the unoccupied bed and finds the mattress hard and lumpy. He watches Byleth murmur in her sleep and then he is drifting through the same blackness, exhaustion overtaking his crashing adrenaline.

He dreams of Glenn. In his dream, the blade pierces Glenn’s chest as it always does, but this time Glenn does not fall and die. He crawls hand over knee to Dimitri’s feet. He begs to be saved. He weeps. The tears are bloody and viscous. Dimitri weeps with him. 

When the nightmare loosens its grip, he awakens to moonlight filtering through dusty curtains and the jittering of Byleth’s bed. She is shaking so violently that the bed creaks.

He thinks of crawling into bed beside her, wrapping himself around her and draining her of all the warmth she has left to give, but he does not trust the notion. She is weak and she is sick and so is he.

Byleth stirs. Her words are punctuated by her chattering teeth as she says, “Camp isn’t far. Go find them.”

The idea is preposterous. He will not leave her. He would be accused of her murder.

He stands and makes his way to her to the sound of the crackling fire. Her eyes are wolfish and luminous in the flickering dark. They never flinch away from him. She struggles to sit up. The blanket slips down to her waist. She is vulnerable and soft in the firelight. Despite everything, she reaches for him. Her trembling fingers cast a promise of safety and comfort against the wall.

There is a hesitation in her stare now that was not there before the war, but has been there ever since their reunion, no matter how he screams and threatens and sinks. It is disgust and horror and longing that refuses to be stifled. He knows because he has felt the same. He wants to break himself against her arms, but there would be nothing salvageable afterward.

Felix has called him feral. And maybe feral gets to the core of what he is, even if it is not as gentle as suggestions of mad and insane.

When he avoids her touch and grabs the headboard of her bed, she falls back to her pillow. She closes her eyes so that the edges crinkle. The floor howls as Dimitri drags the bed from the corner to the fireplace. The light of the flames writhes in her hair. He leaves her to the warmth of the fire and returns to the bed he’s claimed for the night.

He sits with his back to the wall and he watches her examine the extent of her wound. She pokes at it. Her face doesn’t shift, but he can see the pain in her eyes. Once, he had thought she had simply grown more expressive around him, but the truth is that he had grown accustomed to her mannerisms. Now, it is a wasted talent.

“Between jobs, this is where I lived with my father,” Byleth says. “I haven’t thought of this place in years, but when that sword cut through me…”

She does not finish. She shifts from the sheets. Her face tinges white as she presses a hand to her side.

“Will you do me another favor?” she asks.

“I have done enough,” he says and it hurts, but he says it anyway. He needs her face to fall and her smile to curdle and her eyes to sour with tears. She must realize that he is beyond her touch. It is easier this way. There is nothing for him except blood and revenge. He cares for nothing but carrying out the will of his ghosts.

When she stands, he makes no move to stop her. He only watches her feet mark delicate footprints through the dust. She stumbles with every step, and his resolve stumbles with her, but he remains still. Even in the firelight, he can see that her hand is strained white against her side, keeping the pain from spilling out with only the pressure of her palm. 

She reaches the corner where her bed once sat and leans heavily against the wall. She stoops and then she is huddled against the floor, fumbling with the board closest to the wall. Her breaths are wheezes as she struggles with the nails. She pulls at them with her fingernails and it must hurt, but she does not stop. He wishes she would. 

It is a slow, torturous sight to behold, but Dimitri remains rooted in place. When she finally pries up the board and reaches beneath it, he releases a silent breath so strong that it rustles the unkempt curtain of his bangs. He cannot see what she has retrieved for she cradles it to her chest, slumping over it to keep it from his sight.

“I hid this here before the Empire attacked the monastery,” she says.

He remembers catching her creeping through the back gates the night before the Empire laid siege from the vantage of his window, but he was already too far gone to care. His only concerns had lain with overdue vengeance. Only later, when he stood accused of murderous treason had he wondered where she had gone and what would have become of him if he had gone with her, if he had allowed her to help him instead of pushing her away.

“My father hated Garreg Mach,” she says. “I was terrified of dying and leaving it behind there.”

Byleth slides the retrieved treasure onto her ring finger and holds it up to her face, but she grimaces and quickly switches it to her other hand. A smile hovers on her usually stoic face. When she lowers her hand, the smile dissipates. She touches her ringed hand to the blackened skin beside her navel.

“It hurts,” she says.

Whatever strength had captivated her is gone. She sways on the ground. Her eyelids flitter like Lindhardt’s during early morning lectures. She sags against the wall.

The bed groans as Dimitri moves from it. He kneels in front of her, but her eyes stare beyond him. She reaches up. Her thumb brushes the cheekbone beneath his eyepatch. The heel of her hand presses against his lips. The scent of her skin is clean beneath the grime.

“Goodnight,” she slurs, and she collapses against his chest. He presses his palm to her forehead. The skin is slick with sweat and feverish. He hooks one arm under her neck and the other under her legs and he lifts her once more. When she is in his arms, he can see that the unburnt skin around her wound is mottled with dark, purple lines. He tilts her down to press his hand to the purple lightning. They are molten heat beneath his fingertips. He doesn’t know what they indicate, but he knows it must be dire.

As he carries her back to her bed, her ring catches in the firelight and sends waves of glittering stars across the room. He begins to lay her down onto the sheets but thinks better of it. He says her name. He jostles her, softly at first, and then roughly so that her head slams up and down against his shoulder. She is unresponsive. Her breath is there, but just barely. If the circumstances were different, he might have thought she was sleeping.

Numbness swells in place of panic. He sets her down. He slings his lance across his back using the ruined tablecloth and then he wraps her in the sheets. She is frozen to the touch.

To the sound of rustling bushes and babbling brooks, Dimitri carries Byleth’s comatose body through dense forest and over gnarled roots. The moon is his only source of light and it is waning tonight. It is pure luck that he finds the encampment. He has never been good with directions.

Gilbert rushes to meet him immediately. At first, the old man yells and scolds, but the anger in his voice shatters at the clear sight of Byleth, limp and pale. 

Mercedes and the other healers overwhelm him. Dimitri offers Byleth to them willingly. He can’t stand it anymore. He storms off for his tent, but Felix is hot on his heels.

“What did you do, boar?” Felix sneers.

Dimitri offers no answer. His tent is in sight. He continues towards it. Felix does not follow. He screams, “How much more blood can you stomach? Will you not settle until you’ve killed every last one of us?”

Dimitri slips into his tent. He does not wash the blood from his hands. He does not clean his armor. He does not remove his lance from his back. He sits and he waits.

Later, how much later, he doesn’t know, Mercedes comes to his tent. She pulls away the flap, but she does not enter.

“It seems she’s slept it off,” Mercedes says. “The Goddess is with us.”

The flap shuffles back into place. Dimitri watches the shadows dance across the rough burlap. He feels nothing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know full and well that Byleth never learns warp (at least, mine never did) but, for the sake of this story, I have taken the creative liberty to give her the ability if only because there is literally no other way in hell she'd get Dimitri to go anywhere (even as inadvertently as she does here). Also, she's a god incarnate for crying out loud so you know what, I have no regrets, just that I could never have her utilize it in game :(  
So this was actually the first chapter I wrote for this thing. Like, this has been done for months (like the week the game came out done) lol. And now that I have it officially posted, I'm not sure that I like where it comes, even though it makes perfect sense in my head. In the future, I might add another chapter before it, but who knows. Writing is an experimental process and I didn't want to delay posting.  
Also, if y'all dig this but crave more of my specific flavor of Dimileth (AKA angst) then you might enjoy the fic, The Rains of Fodlan, I posted last night. But, beware, it's a bit more mature than this one, if ya know what I mean (though this one might get there too, I haven't decided yet :x).  
As always, I hope y'all enjoy!! Drop a comment if you're so inclined. I love hearing the thoughts that come from your lovely brains :,)


	5. Silent Prayers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of an unexpected return.

Despite the efforts of others, Garreg Mach monastery is still in shambles, and the cathedral is worst of all. The statues of the Saints are mangled and tarnished. Mold and decay have taken root within cracked stone and tile. Stained glass monuments to the Goddess are shattered. Much of the ceiling lays on the floor in a monstrous heap of rubble.

And it is here where Dimitri chooses to pass his time. His haunts from his days at the Officers’ Academy, namely the training ground and the knights’ quarters, are too engorged with memories of the past for him to linger. Edelgard’s presence is everywhere familiar to him, the dining hall, the courtyard, the classrooms. But not in the cathedral.

Here, among the rotting pews and disparaged altar, his ghosts are slow to anger. They beg him for Edelgard’s head and bemoan their agony, yes, but they are not as inclined to manifest as abominations of humanity or demand his blood as penance.

Tonight, the dead do not appear to him in any form, perhaps because their numbers have dwindled by one. Because Dedue has returned. Because Dedue walks amongst the living. Because Dedue, who had been studded with enough arrows to fell a battalion, has come back from the dead. And Dimitri, who for so long has felt nothing but hatred and sorrow, sits back against a pillar before the jagged window that once bore the holy visage of the Goddess and weeps.

The salt stings at the rawness of his unwashed, wind-burnt face, but he cannot stop the tears from falling. Since youth, he has been prone to bouts of horrid, messy crying, despite his best efforts to restrain the wet emotion. Not even the ravages of revenge could rend that instinct from him, but, now, for the first time in a long time, there is a twinge of relief in his tears. Because Dedue still breathes. 

The cathedral is silent save for the sniffle of his sobs, but, every so often, a bout of drunken singing or raucous laughter mars the still. Dedue’s return, coupled with the successful capture of the Great Bridge of Myrddin has put the army into a state of euphoria. On his way to the cathedral, Dimitri had stepped over sprawled soldiers and avoided a drunken brawl, all in broad daylight. As he has whittled away the hours in the cathedral, the celebration seems only to have grown. And he hates them for it.

Through his tears, he glares up at the stark night sky and curses the swelling crescendo of violins and horns. To Dimitri, a punch in the gut would be preferable to the carefree celebration. There can be no merriment while the dead waste away in eternal agony, regardless of any momentary bliss. 

It is soon after the music dies that the cathedral doors creak open and voices waft like incense on the stiff air. He recognizes them immediately without having to slink from his hunched position. Surely, he would recognize Rodrigue’s refined accent and Byleth’s inflectionless drawl anywhere, even if he were deaf, dumb, and blind. 

As he listens to the growing conversation, Dimitri can think of no reason why Rodrigue and Byleth would have need to interact, but, then again, he has interacted little with her since her injury. After returning from Ailell, she has not followed him out on his hunts, has barely spoken to him beyond directives and strategies. With her gone, he can once again relish in the rush of a kill without her judging eyes burrowing into his back. When blood coats his hands and human viscera adorns the grass, he can grin without regret and laugh without reprieve. In her absence, he has rediscovered his sadistic mirth and abandoned the lingering questions she had conjured within him. He has grown bolder in his convictions and his methods of defending them.

“You and I are the same,” he had said to her earlier that day and how she glowered at him! Gone are the days when she would gaze wistfully upon him like he was only a breath away from renouncing the needs of the dead. Now, she only stares out from a blank mask, or glowers when he shouts or needles her.

Ultimately, Dimitri is glad to be free of her devastating stare, but its absence does tinge a great many things bittersweet. Often, he finds himself barking a command to watch out to the empty air or checking over his shoulder to see if she has snuck after him. In a way, her absence had ruined the thrill of his hunts just as much as it had enhanced them, yet her continued presence at the monastery has ruined everything else.

In the glowing aftermath of Dedue’s return, Dimitri had wanted desperately to train with the other man, to pretend, however foolishly, that the years had not taken their toll. So, after returning from putting down a group of bandits that had grown too boisterous on the trek back from Ailell, he had tracked him to the greenhouse with intentions to demand his time, but Byleth, having remained at the monastery, had beaten him to it. The air had been so stifling as he stood and watched their tearful reunion, unable to move away from the scene.

Even now, his stomach roils and the encounter flashes in shattered glass fragments through his mind: Dedue’s trembling fingers curling a strand of minty hair behind her ear, placing a tender white blossom in the divot of her ear, her arms ensnaring Dedue, her face, serene and flushed, pressing against Dedue’s chest, her lips, murmuring, “I’m so thankful. So glad.”

And the moment Byleth was a mere shadow in the distance, Dimitri had slunk into the greenhouse and sneered, “How touching” because wasn’t it just? Wasn’t it just so sweet that it made his teeth pang? Wasn’t it just so sickening that it narrowed his vision to a red haze? Wasn’t it just so damned wonderful that it belonged in a storybook? 

When he stumbles into the cathedral and weeps for Dedue, it is because he is so thankful and so enraged that the other man has returned. It doesn’t make any sense, but nothing has made much sense since Byleth crawled up from the river and waltzed back into his life.

Now, her voice drifts like a forgotten memory on the stale air.

“Thank you for accompanying me,” Byleth says. Her voice is a sweetness in the dusty air, brushing cobwebs from the abandoned space with every word. “But I assure you, I can handle myself.”

Rodrigue laughs, the way Dimitri remembers him laughing when his father and Glenn still roamed the earth, and says, “I don’t doubt it, but I will sleep better knowing that you went undisturbed.”

Dimitri leans back against the pillar, foolishly hoping to be devoured by the smooth marble. He has done his best to avoid Rodrigue. He needs pity from no man. 

“I hope you will consider what I’ve said,” Rodrigue says and Dimitri considers masking the sound of the older man’s voice with his hands. Everything he says, no matter the context, sounds like a lecture. “I know that I am asking much of you, but, please, he will listen to you.”

Stiffening at the assumed invocation, Dimitri scowls. He will listen to no living soul and Byleth least of all. Or so he tells himself.

“Why entrust this to me?” Byleth asks. Her voice is close, another step more and she would be able to see him hunched in the dark, but it draws no nearer. When Rodrigue speaks, his words carry from farther away, softer than they had once been.

“I know you have only his best intentions in mind.”

Rodrigue’s footsteps retreat and then recede behind the slamming door. In the resounding silence, Dimitri stands. The groan of his armor echoes.

Byleth says nothing, but she has the Sword of the Creator drawn when he steps from the shadow of the pillar. A sigh crosses her lips and then she sheathes her relic. In a gauzy dress cast in the dim starlight, Byleth takes on the appearance of a lonesome spirit, come to guide his soul on to the next life.

Once, it had been suggested that he had an inclination for the poetic and maybe that is why his mind slips so easily into exaggeration and metaphor, but, truly, it is a means of survival, of keeping himself sane when everything feels much too real. 

“Conspiring with Rodrigue?” Dimitri asks. “I thought you smarter than that.” 

Nothing moves across her face as she shakes her head. Her eyes are bright, but burdened with the strain of barring her thoughts from him.

“Hello Dimitri.”

She sounds tired, bored of him already, thinking of others, thinking of Dedue, probably. Her eyes pitch to the ground. Her foot inches from beneath the hem of her dress to prod at a loose piece of rubble.

“What did he ask of you?”

When she scowls at him, her lips thin considerably. It is an expression he has seen directed towards the antics of Sylvain and Caspar, but never towards him. Never has he drawn her annoyance. Her ire, yes, abundantly, but never her annoyance.

Somehow, it is funny to him. One near-mortal injury and she has lost all semblance of patience with him. It is then that he notices the paper wedged between her fingers because she shifts it behind her back in a weak attempt to hide it from him. The sight of it boils his blood and he is upon her only a few beats later.

The years have given him a great advantage of height. Towering above her, she is a rabbit to his wolf. He pries the paper from her fingers, but she jerks her wrist. The paper flutters to the ground with a shuffling whisper.

Byleth ducks for it and then he is grabbing at her wrist, yanking her back hard enough that he can feel the delicate bones sliding together. She gasps and her face darkens and she is breathing with her entire body. If she could wield her gaze like the Sword of the Creator, he surely would have been shorn in half by her stare alone.

“Let me go.”

But he can’t. He won’t. He wants to bend her wrist until it snaps and pull her to his chest and throw her against the wall and banish her from his sight and let her touch the bare agony of his soul with her warm hands and throw her from the parapets and weep in her arms. His wants are nothing more than passing thoughts. They carry no swell of emotion, good or bad, with them.

His father’s vanguard flanks her shoulders. Their eyes burn in incandescent reds and blues through the visors of their helmets. Blood leaks from the grates shielding their mouths. Some are missing limbs. Some are missing heads. 

“She can’t be trusted,” they say in a forsaken chorus. “She wants us to burn for all eternity.”

He releases her in favor of rubbing at his eyes, forgetful of the patch over his left and the scarred lid beneath. When the dead appear to him, his vision is never hindered.

“What do you see?” Byleth asks. She touches his shoulder. She looks at him like she cares. Not a shred of previous frustration darkens her brow.

Instinct drowns his reason. She is too close. She is sucking up all his air. He cannot breathe. With the back of his hand, he casts her aside and she stumbles against the pew. Her knees bend and then she is sprawled over the wood. One arm is strewn over the back of the pew. The other snakes over her chest. Her hand cradles the base of her throat. Her chest heaves and the ghosts fade to his dry, aching want.

The wind rips through the collapsed ceiling. His hair whips around his face and stings the skin it strikes as it sticks to the wet of his recently shed tears. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he bends to retrieve the paper. It is crinkled and faded. A date is smudged in the corner; 20th of the Pegasus moon, three years prior. It is written in Rodrigue’s swooping hand. It is not addressed to him. It holds no reference to him at all. It is a heartfelt apology written within a birthday wish, for Felix. 

The paper shakes in Dimitri’s hands. Shame twists like a noose around his neck. When he tosses it aside, it catches on the wind and sails beneath the nearest row of pews.

“Rodrigue is a sap,” Dimitri says. 

“And you are a damned fool,” Byleth says. She stands and she is bristling. “At least, Rodrigue cares enough about Felix to apologize.”

Everything he has done, the atrocities he has committed before her watchful eye, and this is what undoes her, an insult levelled against a man she barely knows. He scoffs, says, “Apologies are wasted on the living.”

“And what good are they to the dead?” she demands. “They cannot forgive you.”

The vanguard encircles her once more. Glenn stands among them. He is whole, but disappointed. He cocks his head. The hollow of his eyes ask how much longer he must suffer. Then, they are all gone and it is only he and Byleth once more.

“I don’t need your forgiveness,” Dimitri says. “All I need is Edelgard’s head. And then—”

Byleth frowns, shakes her head, steps away from him. He lurches in front of her, stopping her retreat. She _will _listen to him. She must.

She feigns left, darts right, but he catches her about her waist. From there, it is a simple thing to sweep her off her feet and pin her against the pillar. She weighs no more than a fistful of owl feathers.

She does not fight back, does not make a single sound beyond a sharp puff of air. And then she is held prisoner to his whims, trapped between his unyielding arms.

It is so stupid, so irresponsible, to hold her in such a way, so close and so intimate. Byleth doesn’t struggle, but her body turns stiff and taut in his grasp. Her cheeks dimple from the clench of her jaw. Beneath her coalescing red anger, there is a glint of quickening fear in her eyes and he knows that he is more beast than man. 

"Do not ignore me,” he says, but the brusque command does not frighten her. If anything, it emboldens her.

Quick as a lightning strike, she touches his face before he can restrain her. She brushes sticky hair from his face and then he snatches her wrist, slams it back against the smooth column. Her hand fists, but she doesn’t buck his grasp. She says, “You’ve been crying.”

Sharp breath hisses between his teeth. 

“What does it matter to you?”

From far off, there comes a thunderous crash of breaking porcelain and then a shrill screaming. It sounds like Lorenz, but Dimitri doesn’t much care. Byleth doesn’t seem to either.

“You matter to me.”

He wants to cry all over again. This is all horribly, awfully wrong. She pushes back against him, not in any way that would free her, but in a way so that she fills his arms and stands nearly flush against him, no longer shying away. She should be flailing. She should be screaming. She should be unsheathing the Sword of the Creator and driving it through his throat. 

“Leave me be," he says, more petulant than he intended, more a whine than a threat, and he can't let her go. In the span of a few exchanges, he has been defanged and declawed. The point of contact between his hand and her wrist radiates raw jitters up through his arm.

She stares at him from underneath her lashes. The moonlight catches in the sheen of her parted lips. Her elbow braces his chest, keeping him at an arm’s length. Regardless, it wouldn’t be difficult to shove her arm aside, to take her face between his hands, to kiss her until his lungs popped, to savor her honeysuckle breath until he can taste again.

Only an animal could think such thoughts in such a situation, he tells himself and then he is above himself, watching himself, huge and hulking, over her slight form. He cannot move. He can only watch as she touches his face with her other hand. He cannot feel her fingers push hair from his brow or the warmth of her skin or the raggedness of her callouses. There is only the space in his head where his thoughts converge and nothing else. The marble cracks beneath his fingers. Everything is so wrong. 

When the doors burst open seconds later, Dimitri is so far within himself that he almost doesn’t notice. But then Felix is screaming and yanking him off her and his mind is too syrupy to protest and the kiss of a blade cools the throb of his neck and still nothing feels real and Felix is snarling, “I say we put it down,” and Sylvain is holding up his hands and saying, “Hold on a second!” and Byleth is shoving at Felix until he backs down and she is shouting, “That’s enough!”

And all at once, it is too much. As the walls close in around him, Dimitri stumbles back and Felix swipes his blade across the front of his armor so that scrapes the dark metal with a high whine. He says, “I don’t care if you are our only hope of saving Faerghus or not. Touch her again, and I won’t hesitate to cut you down.”

When he storms out, Byleth rushes after him, shouting some nonsense about a misunderstanding that stirs the dread in the air. In the wake of their departure, Sylvain forces a laugh. The dead circle him like vultures. Their heads lull and the flesh sloughs from their bones. They are all screaming without sound. 

Dimitri’s mouth goes dry. His head pangs.

Sylvain doesn’t seem to notice. Or care. He says, “Sorry about that. We heard yelling and, well, Felix can’t read a room to save his life.”

Dimitri cannot speak. He is shaking all over in the smallest ways. It is like the day he lost his eye. It is all too much.

And Sylvain keeps blabbering. He asks, “So, trying out a few of my moves, eh?” but the question fades as the dead grow restless. It is easier to act than to speak. Dimitri turns on his heel and returns to his post against the pillar. He sinks down the smooth stone until his legs are bunched against his chest. Even curled around himself on the ground, he cannot stop shaking. 

Sylvain says something, some sarcastic goodbye most likely, but he leaves. And when he is gone, the dead smother Dimitri in demands of retribution.

“Why must we suffer?” they howl. “Why do you leave us to rot?”

His father stands facing away from him. Usually, Lambert’s heavy gaze never leaves him, but now Dimitri has strayed so far from his promise, Lambert cannot even look at him.

“I haven’t abandoned you,” Dimitri says to his father’s back. “I will always be with you.”

In the ruins of the cathedral, Dimitri makes an unspoken vow: he will forgo the comforts of sleep, of food, of speech that extend beyond necessity, he will no longer seek out Dedue’s company or Byleth’s attention, he will devote himself fully, wholly, completely to the service of the dead, as he once has, for all those lost, but for his father most of all. 

“Always,” they say.

Lambert has turned, slightly, and the moonlight shines through the decayed flesh of his jaw. Dimitri stares at the rotted profile of his father and begins to weep anew. Too long, his father has languished in hell. Through fresh tears, Dimitri promises, “Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so this was a doozy to write. I don't really have much to say beyond that I promise the overwhelming angst will be giving way to other elements here soon...  
Also, I'm apparently a total doofus because not only did I upload the wrong chapter last week which forced me to upload TWO chapters and put me a week behind my schedule, I also had Dimitri using Areadbhar BEFORE HE CANONICALLY RECEIVES IT. UGH.  
ALSO also, random shout out to the dimileth fanartists because wow, I did not think I was gonna be able to finish this chapter on schedule and I knocked it out a day AHEAD of schedule thanks to some of the wonderful fanart I came across. Y'all are doing the lord's work!  
As always, leave comments if you feel so inclined. I love hearing from y'all <3  
EDIT: I've edited the end of this chapter because the scene left me unsettled. At the time, I was super into it, but the more i reflected on it, the more I realized how awful it was and the implications it presented. I just really didn't like how I'd written Dimitri's introspection and actions. But it's better now lol.


	6. After the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Comfort after the storm.

It is raining. The freezing drops blend with the tears on his face. Rodrigue is dead. Edelgard still breathes. And Enbarr is so far away.

In the heart of the tempest, Byleth comes to him, speaks kind words, holds him with warm hands, talks him down from certain suicide, pulls him from the screeching winds and hateful rain.

Nothing is real. Time moves like a cat with a belly too full of milk. He is standing in the storm and then he is not. He is stumbling through the courtyard and then he is not. He is in the dark and then he is not.

He is in a room, her room, and then he is sitting on a bed, her bed.

Years pass in the rain that pelts the lone window. He sees himself, impaled on a muddy battlefield. He sees his mother, yawning from the dusty portrait that hangs in Fhirdiad. He sees Dedue, plucking weeds from the dirt. He sees the blood-soaked land of Duscur. He sees Glenn murdered and mutilated. He sees his father—

“Focus on breathing,” Byleth says and he does. He focuses on breathing until his chest hurts. The air smells like fresh linen beyond the stink of his drenched skin.

His leg bounces and jitters. It will not stop moving. Moving. Are the walls moving? Are the dead coming for him? They must be; he has forsaken them. He has said he will live for himself.

“No ghosts,” Byleth says. “Just dark.”

There is a teacup, two bluebirds painted on its side, in his hands. Chamomile, with two lumps of sugar, the way his stepmother prepared it for him as a child. He can smell it even if he cannot taste it. Byleth made it for him. When? He isn’t sure. Today? Tomorrow? Ages past? He thinks they talked about children in the market.

His father’s vanguard stands in the dark corners of her room. There are bloody tears in their eyes. They smell like sweat and leather and mud and rain and desert and winter. They say nothing. Their silence suffocates.

The porcelain cup explodes in his hand. The tea scalds. The broken bits dig into his hand. Small droplets of blood swell and slide along the curve of his palm. His shoulder aches beyond belief. The ghosts have vanished but their faces linger in the shadows of his memory.

Each bit of porcelain Byleth plucks from his flesh is a promise made to change. 

“I will be better,” he says.

The shattered remains end up on the windowsill. When all the bits lay bloody on the windowsill, Byleth gathers them up and tosses them in the wastebasket.

“I believe you,” she says.

The cuts scab. His hand aches. He will be better. For her. For Rodrigue. For Glenn. For his father. For himself.

“May I?” Byleth asks. She touches the thin skin on his forehead. He gives his blessing, for what, he doesn’t know, with a dry mouth.

In silence, Byleth pulls the wet hair from his face. Her fingers leave tingles in their wake. She ties his hair back behind his head. For the first time in years, he looks out into the world without a mask of heavy hair.

Her shoulder, damp and musky from the rain, kneads against his neck as she leans around him. He holds her about the waist because it is a simple thing to do; he has thought about it often. She warms his hands. Only when his wet armor lays in hunks on the bedspread does he relinquish his grip. Every part of him is numb. She presses soft cotton into his hands.

“Try these,” she says. “They should fit.”

A plain shirt and breeches. When did she get them? Why does she have them? If she explained, he wasn’t listening. He doesn’t ask now.

“Will you be alright by yourself? For a moment?” she asks.

He stares. He nods. She smiles.

The door opens, closes, and then she is gone. He sits alone in her room. It is much smaller than he’d imagined it in his academy days. It is adorned with nothing that could mark it as hers, save for the relic propped against her desk. It so clean that it is lonely. He is lonely.

A knock on the door.

“Are you finished?”

Ah. She expects him to change.

He doesn’t answer, strips from wet underclothes, leaves the soggy husks on the floor. He puts on the breeches. They sag a bit in the waist. He is a big man, but these were made for a bigger waist than his. He wonders after who they belong. A lover maybe? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything about her life without him.

Another knock. She calls his name. His wet underclothes lay like molted snakeskin on the floor. He thinks he should hang them up. He cannot stomach the stench of mildew; his sense of smell has grown too strong in the absence of his taste. He drapes them over her desk.

The door creaks open. He flattens out his wet undershirt so that it is even and smooth over the top of the desk. The rain is the only sound in his head.

Warm hands touch his back. They slip beneath the knotted gauze over his wound, unwrap the linen from his body. Her arms brush his as she unspools the bandage. She doesn’t show him, but he knows he is bleeding, emptying out all over her hands. His skin is warm and slick from the oozing blood.

The girl didn’t stab him deep. She could have. Easily. It would have been a simple thing to kill him. He was unguarded, unconcerned. Begging for death. And Rodrigue had denied him a coward’s death.

Dimitri keeps his eye clenched so tight the rest of his face scrunches around it. The ghosts are all around him. He can hear their simpering, but to look upon them would be to come undone. He cannot stop shaking.

“The rain’s getting worse,” Byleth says and the room quiets. For the time being, with only the sound of her voice, she has banished his ghosts.

Byleth lays the bloody gauze on the table. She takes his hand, guides him to the bed. When he sits, she kneels behind him and presses a fresh pad of gauze to his back. The pain murmurs.

As he bleeds, she rubs his arm with her free hand. Her callouses scrape his skin to the point of discomfort. He doesn’t understand why he is here. Why she has stayed. The storm outside is so loud. It won’t stop screaming.

Her arms ensnare and retreat around him in hasty rhythm as she wraps his wound. He wants her to stop edging away and keep her arms tight around him. He doesn’t care if he bleeds out. If the wound gets infected. If he dies. It’s what he deserves. What he wants. But he wants her too. And to live again. He knows now that he wants that more than anything.

When she draws away and the air is dull without her, he asks, “Won’t you speak?”

“What would you have me say?”

Later, he will be embarrassed by his pitifulness. He will apologize to her and say he was at his lowest, that he had not the strength to act as a man. Later, but not now.

“Say you will stay,” he says.

His knuckles strain white against his skin as her hand grazes his shoulder and lingers, for just a moment.

“Always,” she says. 

The mattress shifts beneath him when she moves around to his side. She is close enough that he can see the divots between each of her eyelashes and the flecks of gold in her eyes. Her hand moves to his face and it is like being asleep but lacking the ability to awaken as her fingers hook the elastic above his ear. She works it off his ear, but he jerks away before it can sag too far and reveal the scar that even he has not seen.

Reaffixing the eyepatch is harder work than he expected. His fingers fumble over the straps. Byleth aids him, ensuring that the black fabric isn’t going anywhere. Her apology is in her stare.

“Does it hurt?” she asks, when she has finished.

“Not anymore.”

His knuckles graze her mouth. It is softer, suppler, than he ever could have imagined. He leans closer. Breathes the air straight from her lungs. She touches the jut of his chest, touches the back of his neck, touches the crown of his head, touches the curve of his arms. Warmth blossoms beneath her fingers, zips down along his spine.

“Dimitri,” she says. “Don’t do anything you will regret.”

He has been mistaken, all this time. She does not want him.

Of course.

How could she?

But he will savor the moments she is willing to give. Because everything will only be harder now. Atonement is hard. So hard. He knows even if he has just begun trying. But he will be better. He has to be. For everyone, but for himself most of all.

Without a word, she steps away. She exhales loudly. She smoothens her hair flat over her skull. She turns down the sheets. She says, “Sleep.”

Everything smells like her. The sheets, the room, the rain, the wind, the sun, everything.

Dimitri burrows into her bed without protest. He is tired, so tired, too tired to walk back to his own room. He lies on his side, does his best to ignore the throb in his back. 

Her fingers dance across his face. She strokes her thumb against his cheek. She hums a hymn that he has forgotten. He wants to hold her hand in his own. He tells himself he needs it only one more time. One more time and he will be satisfied by the sensation. He gropes blindly for her hand, finds it, so small and delicate, and envelops it in his own.

“Sleep, Dimitri,” she says, but she is smiling. It is just as mesmerizing as the first time he bore witness to it.

And he does sleep. 

For the first time, Dimitri sleeps through the terrors of his nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have a ton to say about this chapter. It's pretty straightforward and I really enjoyed writing it lol.  
The next few chapters are being real sticky in getting written, but I've still got a lot of ground to cover (can anyone say post-war shenanigans?) and I'm real stoked to present them.  
And apparently it's dimileth week lol? I wish I had known before like... yesterday so I could have prepared something, but alas!  
As always, I hope y'all enjoy!!! <3


	7. Flavorless Sweets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late night treats and confusing encounters.

There has been a lull in the war. The Kingdom army holds strong against the Empire after its absorption of the Alliance. Plans are being made to march on Enbarr, but the decision will not be made until the war council tomorrow. And, for the time being, the night is still strong.

Garreg Mach is alive with the sounds of honeyed music and sweet laughter. A roaring celebration, under the guise of someone’s birthday, is to blame. A windfall of liquor left behind by recently routed bandits also serves to exacerbate the situation. To Dimitri, the prospect of a wild, drunken party is akin to torture. He would like nothing more than to spend his night among stacks of unanswered correspondence, but the relentless pleading of friends had coaxed him into the fray.

It had seemed inappropriate for him to witness his soldiers and subjects clinging to one another like wild animals, yet they did not seem to care. They greeted him joyously and made chipper small talk and a few women with eyelashes like bat wings even tempted him for a dance. He failed to understand how these people, who less than a month ago had fled at the mere sight of him, held so much goodwill towards him. Between pauses in the music and laughter, he could not help but simmer in the knowledge that he is deceiving them all. He is the same wretch he was before; the only difference is that now he is trying to be more.

It was a simple thing to return to the solace of his chambers. A pained scowl here. An offhand complaint there. And then Annette asking, “Are you feeling alright?” and Mercedes asking, “Have you taken your medicine?”

And he had not then, and still has not now, but the lack of herbal calm had nothing to do with his discomfort. It was in a crowd that his entire family had been slaughtered and it is within a crowd that he will never find comfort. Even when he is far removed from the maw of the dense crowd, lounging at his desk and toying with the dagger he had given to Edelgard long ago, his eye makes shapes of the dark. No physical specters appear from the mire, as they have been slow and seldom to manifest as of late, but ghosts of a different kind take form as he is slips into the torrent of reclaimed memory, things once lost to the mud of his mind.

A girl with corn silk hair and jade eyes humming a sad song and wrapping dirty gauze around his bicep. A lagoon that swallowed him whole, but spit him up before he could drown. A dog with a limp sharing the scraps of a meal. A woman tattooed with the night sky kissing his knuckles, weeping, shrieking. A child pelting him with stones and mud and vicious laughter. A painting of the one who’d held his heart in her hands and hadn’t known it, inscribed into the side of a building above the word _incarnate. _A throng of screaming children weeping over the corpses of their loved ones. An old man interrupting his commune with the dead, asking after his wellbeing, falling silent with only a single strike.

There’s more, of course, the sing of metal, the bite of blood, the cold embrace of midnight, but these are all a ripple in the roaring wave. He was a monster, is one still, but he is doing his best to atone. Memories of past mistakes serve as a reminder that the path he treads now is the right one.

A knock at his door nearly sends him toppling to the floor. The dagger shoots out from beneath his fingertips and impales itself in his desk. When he rips it out, a small scar mars the wood.

“Dimitri?”

Byleth. Her voice is smooth and sweet, even dulled by the thick door. 

“Annette told me you weren’t feeling well.”

For far too long, Dimitri stares at the dark wood, imaging Annette skipping up to Byleth and flashing those big doe eyes of hers and cooing, “Aw, Byleth, Dima’s not feeling well. You should go see him.”

Unfortunately, the nickname was not a fabrication of his imagination. Ever since he has approved Annette’s notion of him as an older brother of sorts, she has taken to the demeaning nickname. No amount of disdain has persuaded her to drop the affection.

Another knock.

“Are you in there?’

He has half a mind to send her away. Not because he doesn’t want to see her, but because of the dastardliness in Annette’s having sent her here. Ever since the details, the completely _innocent _details, of his night spent with Byleth during the storm have somehow become public knowledge, Mercedes and Annette have convinced themselves of Dimitri’s infatuation with their former professor. Since his return, they have been absolutely relentless.

Day after day, they have connived ways to force him into Byleth’s presence. Yesterday, they had convinced him of an impromptu war council and, when he entered the meeting room, he had discovered that Byleth had been convinced of the same. The day before that, they had arranged for the former members of the Blue Lion house to take tea in the courtyard, only to threaten and subdue everyone except for Byleth and himself into skipping it.

They take so much joy in their fumbled matchmaking that he hasn’t the heart to tell them he has already suffered her rejection. And besides, despite her disinterest in him, he enjoys the time spent with her, ill-gotten or not, even after everything. Even after last week.

It was an accident, entirely. He hadn’t even been looking for her, but heading to the library and had stumbled upon them entangled and kissing in an alcove. He hadn’t recognized the man, but assumed him a merchant of some sort, from the soggy shape of his body and the haughty jut of his mouth.

He hates the memory, but he thinks of it often. He is jealous of the delicate way the man had held her and cannot keep from remembering the haze in her eyes, her flustered, breathless apology, the taut coil of her legs around the man’s waist. The next morning, she had sought him out, offering loose explanations for her behavior, but he waved them away in good humor. He tells himself he is happy that his poor nature has not impacted her ability to find happiness; no matter how it hurts.

Of course, Mercedes and Annette are none the wiser. Byleth’s business is her own and he cannot bring himself to harbor ill intent towards her. Rejection stings, but he will honor her wishes above all else. He would give her the world if she asked.

“I’ll leave if you want,” she says. He imagines her speaking directly into the door, pressing her full mouth up against the sanded wood. “At least let me know that you’re alright.” 

Dimitri stands, leaving the dagger on the desk, and runs a hand through his hair, only for it to catch in the small tie holding back the bulk of his hair. The style is still an unfamiliar burden on him, but so many have told him it makes him more approachable, so he endures.

Cursing, he yanks the hair loose and pulls it back as he opens the door. She smiles weakly at him, her lips a thin line. There are shadows lingering beneath her eyes. She raises a hand to him, a steaming cup that stinks of angelica clenched between tight fingers and a small basket hanging from her wrist. With her free hand, she reveals the contents of the basket, fresh rolls, glazed and shiny.

“Mercedes asked me to bring these to you,” she says.

Dimitri cannot help but scowl. He has asked Mercedes and Annette not to involve the others in his treatment. It is a much better story that divine grace and strong will guided him from the dark, not a handful of roots yanked from the mud. 

Swallowing his glare, he takes everything from her and gives his thanks, yet she remains, staring. There is a haze about her face, something slightly off in the lean of her stance. When he steps back with the intent to bid her goodnight, she mirrors his movement, drawing the tiniest bit closer. She stares.

“Would you like to come in?” he asks.

She nods, steps past him without a word. Her passing imbues the air with lavender, fallen leaves, and something heavy, sour, unfamiliar. He leaves the door open.

As she sets about his room, he sets the rolls on his desk and takes the cup between both hands. He warms his face in the hot steam. When he sips, it stings. Even without his taste, it puckers the insides of his cheeks and prickles at his tongue. It is exceedingly bitter. It always is.

“My father always cut that with fresh-squeezed grapes,” she says. Her stare extends through him. Her words tingle with a slight stumble. “Or mulled wine.”

The notion of the great, unflinching Jeralt suffering from similar ails is profound, but Byleth doesn’t allow him to dwell on it. She moves through his room like a visitor from another world, dragging her hand along every surface and crevice she can. Like a mist, she glides her hand over his desk, his books, his armor, his headboard. Only when her hand alights on the fur of his bedspread does she stop and swirl her fingers in the smoothness of it. 

“I’ve never been here before,” she says. Her words ooze with the emotion that is lacking from her face. He unclenches his jaw and sips at the drink again. On the second taste, the sting of it is not so overwhelming.

“Is that Fhirdiad?” she asks and she is pointing past him, pointing to the map tacked over the bulk of the wall.

It has been so long since he has registered the map as anything other than a constant fixture, so long since he has gazed upon it in wistfulness, so long since he has acknowledged it as home that he had forgotten it was there. It had been his father’s once, a long time ago.

“Castle Fhirdiad, yes,” he says.

She stands, moving to the yellowing ink as a moth drawn to flame. The tip of her pointer finger smooths along the map, rounding corners, climbing stairs, traversing halls. When her finger slips off the crinkled paper, she turns over her shoulder, saying, “I want to see it all.”

Though his stomach twists, he says, “I’ll take you, when this is all over.”

“I’d like that,” she says, but her face shows nothing of the sort. It is like when he first met her and apathy glinted like ice in the vast sea of her eyes while disinterest hardened the shape of her flesh to the point of inhumanity.

And again, she is moving, slipping past him to hover over his desk. The dagger, bent from its sudden insertion into hard wood, draws her hand. Then, she is spinning it on the tip of her pointer finger, pressing it hard against the pad. There is a crack of anger that wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. He expects blood.

Though she has voiced nothing on the topic besides tepid agreement, he knows she does not approve of his decision to meet with Edelgard. Even now, while she is so expressionless and blank, her eyes glimmer like a coiled snake. For someone so eager to push forgiveness, she seems to reserve none for Edelgard. Always, there is a disconnect in her words that forces a clear divide between the student she once taught and the emperor waging war.

But he has to believe Edelgard can be reconciled with, he has to try, no matter how futile. 

“If she meets you, what will you say to her?” Byleth asks. The dagger has fallen still in her hands. Her eyes droop to its hilt. A shock of loose hair casts a shadow over her brow. 

In the years he has known her, Dimitri has been afraid of her only once, when she had stepped free of the sky to strike down Solon without a shred of mercy on her enlightened face. Looking at her now, in the dim light of his bare bedroom, he is reminded of that day, not of the fear exactly, but of the heat behind his eyes when she had turned and extended her hand to him with divine retribution coloring her anew. 

“I am unsure,” he says now. “Something to make her see reason.”

Byleth drops the dagger to the desk so that it clatters and, as the sound rings through the still room and out into the empty hall, she says, “She told me I made a mistake, choosing you over her. Said you were unhinged, dangerous.”

A stiffness blossomed in his chest at her words. Even then? When he had tried so desperately to conceal the chasm within him? Edelgard had recognized his suffering and done nothing? Despite everything they had been?

But it did not change anything. Once, she had been a cherished friend. Once, he had loved her. Maybe he still did, in the way that one loves the translucent memories of childhood. And he would try to end her tyranny, for the girl, for the friend, she had once been.

“I told her she was wrong,” Byleth says. “She didn’t like it much.”

“No, I don’t suppose she would have,” he says, but it is feeble, crumbling beneath her attention.

With eyes like forest fires, Byleth sweeps up the length of his form, slow and deliberate. He doesn’t see her slip her hand into the basket and rip a piece of sweet roll free, he is too fixated on the smoldering in her gaze, but he knows she must have, when she moves before him and brandishes a torn morsel just before his mouth. Heat rises between her fingers, tickles his nose. 

“Here,” she says, pressing it just to his lips. “Taste.”

And he does, but there is nothing distinguishable, only the hint of something. Something sweet and clean. It is the first thing he has tasted in so long that he is sure it is a mistake. 

“It’s good,” he says and she smiles, slow and small. Her eyes push ever so slightly closed. Then, her hand, sticky with glaze, touches his face, traces the curve of his cheek, leaves a slick of sugar in their wake. As heat blurs his thoughts, he imagines her fingers coming to rest on his mouth again so he could suck the sweetness from them. But then, the weight of the sky is breaking overtop of him.

He splits, somewhere between here and there, and she is prying at his eyepatch with her fingers smelling like honey. The sweetness scalds. Her thumb flicks the jutting bone just beneath his mangled eye.

From the wall, hands jut and grope, watery and ephemeral, shifting like worms up against each other. He closes his eye, tries to find his center, recalls the sting of medicine on his tongue, breathes as evenly as he can muster, wishes the visions would leave him entirely.

“Does it hurt?”

The words will not come so he shakes his head, mutely, dumbly. Her hand lingers against his cheek, her thumb traces up and down his cheekbone. It is so black behind his eyelid that it feels like falling. He hates himself, hates her, because it doesn’t make sense. This is what he wants, her so tender and so gentle, so why is his skull fracturing in two? Why can’t he find his fingers? Why has the air turned so thick?

“I wasn’t there for you,” she says, “but I’m here now.”

Her words resonate more than the cathedral bells ever have as her hand radiates warmth against his face.

When he opens his eye, the hands still extend from the wall, but they are bent at the wrist, limp like hanged men and swaying on an impossible breeze. And Byleth among them, bright and stark against their mottled flesh. In her light, they wither to husks and then they wither to nothingness.

“Dimitri?” 

With her so close, he can smell the whiskey on her tongue and finally the blank of her face and the droop of her stance makes sense. Her breath is an entire continent between them.

“You’re drunk,” he says, accusing her of acting on feelings she can’t possibly feel. There is too much standing between them: five years spent apart, bodies stacked for the sake of the dead, a grievous injury, a soft refusal voiced in the symphony of the storm, a merchant kissed in the black of night, and too many unanswered questions. 

“I—”

The starry backlight in her eyes fades. Her mouth tightens. But her hand stays latched against his face and he nearly asks her to stay, to continue to intoxicate him with her proximity and keep the ghosts at bay. Nearly.

“I’m sorry,” she says and then she is retreating from him, practically fleeing, so that her fast steps echo in the hall when she runs from the room. The memory of her hand on his cheek sizzles.

For a moment, he convinces himself he has imagined the entire encounter, but, no, the basket of sweet rolls and the half full teacup leering up from his desk attest to the reality of the situation.

The time it takes for him to close and lock his door, strip down to his nightwear, and clamber into bed passes in a single lurching blink. The split brought on by Byleth’s touch has deepened so that half of him exists within the dense weight of his body and half of him hovers above, in the space where night and shadow coalesce. There is the him existing here-now and the him teetering on the edge of the mania left by Byleth’s drunken advances.

In her absence, he muddles the encounter until he can scarcely remember the sensation of her affection. Her words, _“But I’m here now,” _circle his head like a swarm of gnats as the thin remnants of the dead keep watch over his slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiiiiiiiiiii~  
So I had a lot of turmoil over this chapter because I kept going back and forth on how I wanted everything to play out. This is about the fifth ending I've written, yet somehow the most unsatisfying one, and I think it works best but it was a hell of a time getting here.  
I'm not sure why, but I've been taken with the idea that Byleth inherited her daddy's penchant for liquor, especially now that everything's so wack and the whole strong emotions thing is still so new to her. Jeralt and Byleth's relationship is so so so fascinating to me and I really wish we'd been given more than we were :(  
Also, I have such complicated feelings with Edelgard. Like I totally get why softhearted Dimitri would want to meet with her, but I frankly think its kinda silly that everyone else is just down with the idea. Like, she's proven she's ruthless and a master warmonger and everyone's just like "sure Dimitri. The power of love will make her see reason :-)"  
As always, I hope y'all enjoy and leave a lil comment if you feel so inclined! I love hearing from you!! :p


	8. Unwanted Celebration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merriment in the wake of bittersweet victory.

Enbarr is conquered. Fodlan is united. And Edelgard is dead.

Her death came as Areadbhar broke through the bars of her ribcage, punctured her heart, left her slumped, just as Dimitri had once dreamed, but it did not feel like victory. Even when Byleth led him from the bloodied throne into the light of day and rapturous applause, it did not feel like victory.

It probably never will. 

Tomorrow he will be officially coronated. It seems like a dream when only a few days ago he had stood before the monstrosity of Edelgard and saw only a future that could have been his. But he is not permitted time for reflection.

Fhirdiad is alive with a rollicking celebration. Liquor flows freely and music enchants the air. Dorothea and Manuela stage an impromptu performance atop the grand staircase in the great hall, singing hymns and arias and anything they can manage. Nobles and commoners alike go mad at the sound of their nightingale voices. If his thoughts weren’t so occupied, even Dimitri would have enjoyed it.

But there are declarations to be made and counselors to be appointed and treaties to be drafted and crowns to be fitted and territories to be visited and dissidents to be appeased and knights to be praised and commoners to be addressed and everything is so overwhelming that Dimitri keeps a running list in his mind lest he forget everything and doom his reign before it has even begun.

Now, he flits between nobles of all kinds, charming them as best he can manage. Until an advisor, an old, bloated turkey of a man, calls him away to suggest he began to charm their daughters instead. Dimitri obliges because he knows dissent would be seen as a sign of instability, even though it should be just the opposite.

They come to him one after another, waiting patiently in the lulls between songs. They are all dressed in the colors of the Kingdom, dark blues and silvers that are too heavy for their frail frames. A few of them tremble in his arms, others stare unabashedly at the patch over his eye, one even having the nerve to ask of its origin, but most simply play at being coy, pursing stained lips and angling their faces to catch the light at flattering slants.

The one he endures now is of the coy variety, inclined to wandering touches and haughty laughs; no surprise given she is a distant relative of Sylvain’s. She is pretty and meticulously put together with the curls on her head and the pleats of her skirt falling just so. If she had a bit more girth about the waist, she could have been one of Gilbert’s carved dolls.

Sylvain has assured Dimitri that he could have her, could have any of them, if he wanted, because even the chance of a royal bastard is better than no association at all. But Dimitri is not Sylvain. He does not love this doll of a woman or any of the others and that makes all the difference. 

So, even as he dances with noblewomen that look like fine china and hang off his every limb, he searches for Byleth, longing for the weight of her hand in his again. Within careful steps and gentle music and the thought of her, he is endlessly lost.

Sometimes, from within the shifting masses of nobles, he catches sight of her, resplendent in the conjured light, and, sometimes, she catches sight of him too and flashes the briefest of sharp smiles, all teeth and thinned lips. He burns when she softens for the nobles that bow to her and kiss at the rings on her hand, knowing they would fall to their knees and lap at her feet if given permission.

The announcement of the next Archbishop has come as a surprise to everyone but her it seemed. Somehow, she has fallen effortlessly into the role, despite her usual stoicism. Adorned in a dress of pure white and inlaid gold, she looks to have stepped straight from the stained glass of Garreg Mach’s cathedral. Her hair is up, a rarity, and coiled around the filigreed rungs of a diadem. If the whispers were to be believed, Rhea had commissioned it before the war, soon after Byleth had stepped from the sky.

Attention pulled from the dance, Dimitri steps on his partner’s foot, mangling the stiff bridge beneath the brunt of his heel.

“I am sorry,” he says, but the woman only titters and waves away the offense, despite the cling of wet tears in the corners of her eyes. She flutters her lashes until the moisture is gone, leaving only brown irises and shaded tawny lids. Black striations of eyeliner streak far off towards her ears, mimicking the rounded eyes of a cat.

In another life, he might have been intrigued by her dark makeup and the steel glinting in her eyes, but now in this life, not now.

Another revolution around the dance floor and then Byleth is in sight once more. She smiles at him, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

Rhea hovers at her side like a reflection in a shadowy water. Devoid of her usual headwear and finery, Rhea seems practically austere in a simple white frock. She is gaunt and pale as the moon, but, even so emaciated, her presence is palpable.

Men and women alike crowd her, pressing close-mouthed kisses to her bare hands and fixating on her as vultures drawn to carrion. Sometimes, he thinks she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Sometimes, he thinks she resembles the garter snakes that made Felix shriek on their trips to the south.

As he spins his partner in the slow manner the routine calls for, Dimitri meets Rhea’s eyes above the horizon of the devout. She nods once in silent, apathetic acknowledgment, and Dimitri finds himself blushing. He has had little interactions with Rhea outside of his former role as student and those interactions had been rife with uncertainty and embarrassment.

Nobles and royals could never make him as nervous as Rhea does. There is a slippery darkness beneath her sculpted piety, exposed by the hesitation in her empty smiles, so familiar that he grows queasy in her intimate presence. He cannot trust her because he recognizes the signs of sanity on the verge of breaking.

Which is why it is all the more upsetting that tomorrow, Rhea will perform the blessing for his coronation. Because Byleth has refused to do so, even though he had asked her personally, even though he had told her he could think of no greater honor than her affirming his ascension to the throne, future Archbishop or not. 

The song dwindles to a close with metered applause. Dimitri bows to his partner, thanks her for her time, greets the next woman seeking his attention, but finds himself lacking the proper introduction at the sight of her. Among the somber palettes of the women hoping to impress, Hilda’s vibrant dress, coordinated to match her pink hair, is a bit of an eyesore, no matter how well she wears it.

“Hilda,” he says. She scowls at him and her hands fist on her hips.

“Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?”

He blinks. It has never occurred to him, though it absolutely should have, that his former classmates could be among the throng of potential suitors. Many hailed from prestigious houses that would be a great boon to his reign. In fact, Hilda was probably at the top of the list, given the influence of her family and her ties to the former Alliance. Though, her petulant attitude and frank unwillingness to exert herself would be taken against her. So, perhaps, he could argue against her as a wife through an examination of her personal qualities and—

“Hello? Earth to Dimitri?”

Ah, he’d gotten too invested in mounting a case against her. It had become a habit in the past few months, since his return to the public eye, when women had been thrown at him incessantly.

People stare as Hilda’s expression grows sour and red. 

“Er, would you allow me to—”

She snatches at his hand before he finishes, leading him into the next dance without pause and shouting, “Sure thing!”

As he stumbles, Hilda falls perfectly into the rhythmic motion, gliding along the floor with him in tow. Over the musical swells, he hears snickers. He scrambles to follow her striding movements, but can not quite match up. While he is not a bad dancer, not when Edelgard’s tough lessons are still drilled into his head all these years later, he is a novice compared to Hilda. 

Once it might have been a surprise to learn that Hilda was a much more proficient dancer than him, but that was before she swept the White Heron Cup at Byleth’s insistence. The stubborn, lazy girl is one of the best dancers to ever grace the halls of Garreg Mach, despite her insistence otherwise. Remembering her heated protests at the prospect of hard work, Dimitri cannot help but smile.

And then he nearly mashes her foot into the stone underfoot.

“Yeesh,” she says. “Shouldn’t you be better at this?” 

He blushes and mumbles, “Apologies.”

Following the misstep, he is careful in his motions, keeping his feet far from hers, even at the cost of looking foolish. She says nothing else, only smirks and continues to lead him in silence.

Dancing with her is not an altogether unpleasant experience, she doesn’t demand more than he can supply and she takes control so that he can simply trail in her wake, but she is resistant to his grasp, always edging away from him, so that it is nearly impossible to move without great strain. But he persists, unwilling to be bested by Hilda, of all people.

They round the stretch of the floor with the view of Byleth and Dimitri stares over Hilda’s pink pigtails, searching for the splash of mint among the dour blues. Only Rhea braces the sea of nobility, stony and resolute among the offered devotions. 

“Byleth left a little while ago,” Hilda says.

Heat creeps up his neck and spills out over his face. He’d believed himself rather skilled at admiring Byleth discreetly from a far. Is he truly so obvious?

To the tune of the cellos, Hilda hums and continues through the dance as if she had said nothing at all. Sweat drips from the nape of his neck, seeping into the hem of his regalia.

Have the others noticed? Sylvain and Dorothea are always teasing him and Mercedes and Annette have convinced themselves of his attraction, but they are ultimately harmless. No, it is the magistrates and the advisors who he fears; they would only grow more resolved in their efforts to find him a wife. And they are well within their authority to draft a proposal, with or without his permission.

“You should talk to her, tonight, before everything tomorrow.” 

He would like nothing more than the chance to speak with her, about anything really, but it is impossible. To leave now would be social suicide.

Hilda leans close, her breath hot against the side of his face, and says, “I might have an idea.”

Mischief dazzles in her eyes and he can only remember all the pranks and hijinks she and Claude orchestrated during their academy days. The day they managed to dye Lorenz hair an unflattering shade of yellow is one no onlooker can ever forget. 

Dimitri should refuse her help, but he also knows she is apt to go through with whatever scheme she has conducted anyway. So, he remains silent, giving her no indication one way or another. When her quizzical expression drops into a smirk, he isn’t sure what to expect, but it certainly isn’t for her to step away and shout, “Oh, I’m feeling rather woozy!”

She touches the back of her hand to her head and then she’s dropping forward, eyes rolling back into her skull as she falls into a dead faint. He catches her, just barely, and she is so limp that he is instantly convinced this is not part of her plan; Hilda has genuinely fainted.

The music screeches to a stop. There are shouts and murmuring all around. He shifts her dead weight more fully into his arms so he doesn’t drop her. He is on the verge of raising the alarm and sprinting to the infirmary, when a quiet voice says, “Oh my.”

Demure Marianne steps from the bulk of the crowd with one hand pressed over her heart and the other reaching for Hilda.

“What’s going on?” Dimitri demands as Marianne feathers her fingers through Hilda’s bangs. Marianne shakes her head and sighs.

“She will be okay so long as we get her to the infirmary,” Marianne says.

And then she is moving through the crowd without a glance back at him. He stands still for a moment, Hilda heavy in his arms, before he realizes he’s meant to follow.

The masses part smoothly before him. Some offer their assistance, but he denies them as politely as he can, assuring that Hilda has only fallen faint from overexertion. Whatever has befallen Hilda would surely only be exasperated by a crowd.

Music begins anew and the people fall back into their dropped social patterns, though their eyes never leave his back. As they approach the exit, Dimitri catches sight of Dedue, standing nearly a head taller than everyone else, by the doors.

“Keep them pacified,” Dimitri says as Dedue shoves open the massive door. Dedue nods and then offers a smile, sincere and honest on his broad features. Before he can question the expression, Dimitri is already through the door and Dedue is tugging it closed.

As the door slams, Hilda jerks awake and wriggles from Dimitri’s grasp like a fish out of water. She catches Marianne about the waist and spins the other woman around with a squeal before Dimitri can even register the empty weight in his arms.

“Aw, you were so great Marianne!” Hilda says, pressing a wet kiss to Marianne’s cheek. Marianne blushes and knuckles her hand against her mouth. Her eyes look to the ground.

Anger bubbles like indigestion in the pit of his stomach.

“What is going—”

A shout silences him as he turns to Annette’s frenzied approach. He glares as she clasps her hands together and announces, “Byleth’s on the balcony.”

Dimitri does not move. His thoughts are a stew of sticky confusion. Hilda has tricked him with the assistance of Marianne, Annette, and Dedue..? For what purpose? To inform him that Byleth has run off for fresh air? Do they intend to make him a fool before his subjects? They will surely answer for this. He is not known for his harshness, not since he has quelled the feral side of himself, but he will gladly demonstrate it to make an example of them. His face has never been so hot. 

Hilda huffs something that sounds like, “Goddess, you are dense,” and then she’s stepping behind him and pounding her fists against his back. It is the most willfully active he has ever seen her.

“Go!” she shouts. “Move! Do something!”

Dimitri steps away from her just to make her stop. Her assault doesn’t hurt, but it is annoying. Annette steps before him. With her face doused in layers of dark makeup, she looks much older and sophisticated. Still, even with the rogue and mascara, she resembles Gilbert so much that it is unnerving.

“C’mon Dima, you couldn’t ask for a moment more perfect than this. It’s so romantic!” she says, beaming so ardently that wrinkles have formed around her lips.

As realization drips down his back like the chill of cold water, he realizes, Goddess, this is probably most embarrassed he has ever been. Not even the time he threw up on the boots of the entire Alliance delegation as a boy holds a candle to the sharp accusation in Hilda’s crossed arms or the gooey emotion on Annette’s face or the blush Marianne does her best to conceal.

But there’s no use fighting it any longer. They’ve gone to the trouble of spiriting him from his duties, at least momentarily, so it is only polite for him to indulge them. 

Annette and Hilda coo at his silent departure and he wishes that it had been his ears he had decimated in the burning sunlight that day rather than his eye.

Thankfully, the gaggle of girls does not follow him in his short jaunt to the balcony. In fact, when he turns, just before exiting, they have all vanished.

Alone, Dimitri tenses. His fingers bend into the brass handles, melding the metal around them. It has been over a month since they have spoken in private, since that night in his room.

But, even without words, she’d tended to his wounds after the battle, after Edelgard had driven the blade through the meat of his shoulder, with softness and without a single I-told-you-so. In fact, she had seemed sullen. And listless. Like driftwood lost to the tumble of the sea.

Between her expression so shrouded in discontent then and every moment since and the hustle to prepare for his coronation, there had never been a good time to ask after that night in his room, before Enbarr lay ruined and before Edelgard lay cold. 

With everything changing so fast, there seems to be no time to determine the weight of his emotions. He knows he cares for her beyond a physical attraction, fears he might even love her, but he cannot act, not when her soft refusal of him and drunken pursuit of him exist as an incomprehensible dichotomy in his mind.

So, when he finally musters the strength to step out onto the balcony, he is without a thought towards what he will say to her. It is foolish, but he simply longs to soothe his frazzled nerves in her calm presence and, for the time being, that will be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes! This so this was such a long chapter that I've decided to split it into two because who doesn't love a juicy little cliffhanger?  
I'm kind of a sucker for sitcom-esque shenagins so here we have Hilda doing her best to provide ample shenagins in Claude's absence. I'm also kind of a sucker for that trope of everyone knowing that two people have feelings for each other when those two people are too silly to admit it to each other. So, shenagins galore, I suppose.  
Also it's so dumb that Dimitri and Hilda don't have supports? Though, it's stupid that Hilda doesn't have supports with everyone tbh. I adore her with my whole heart.  
My week has been super freaking terrible, but you know, some people write fanfic to cope I guess. I hope y'all enjoy!! As always, I look forward to hearing from you!


	9. Trembling Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Complications arise with confessions given.

Out on the balcony, there is a chill in the air, and the wind is brisk, but it does not strip skin from bone. For Fhirdiad, it is temperate.

Music wafts on the crisp breeze. High above the celebration, Dimitri can still hear the swell of voices and violins. The moon is bright and swollen in the sky. There are only a handful of hours left before the date of his coronation will arrive.

Byleth leans fully against the railing, angling her body towards the courtyard down below. The wind rustles her dress so that it ripples like waterlilies. Strands of hair have come loose from her intricate bun and they whip about her head.

Though so much has changed, he thinks of their meeting on the Goddess Tower the night of the ball. He had made a joke about the two of them being together forever in that bumbling, embarrassing nature he’d had about him when he still had yet to grow into his shoulders. But she hadn’t laughed. She’d been upset, had even directed a moody scowl at him, until he’d apologized profusely.

And then Jeralt had been killed soon after. He wondered if the memory of the Goddess Tower was tainted for her, if coming to her in such a similar place will plunge her into the torment of remembered loss.

Under the watchful eye of the stars, he considers fleeing. The door has closed behind him and announced his presence, yes, but Byleth has not turned to acknowledge him. If he returned to the celebration right now, without a word, she would be none the wiser. 

But tomorrow he will be king and tomorrow she will return to Garreg Mach and tomorrow this great unspoken thing in his chest will remain an eternal _what if_. 

With so much uncertainty before him, Dimitri doesn’t quite feel like himself when he leans against the railing beside her and says, “So, this is where you have snuck off.”

Though she still doesn’t look at him, he can see the scowl curling her mouth. Her gaze is focused on the silent courtyard below where the fountain burbles in dim torchlight.

“I needed quiet,” she says. “I do not—”

Her face turns as stormy as the summers along the coast, but then she is angling further from him, concealing whatever he might have discovered in her stare. She looks to the clouds that roll over the moon like water. The diadem in her hair is liquidous from the starlight.

“Never mind. Tonight is a happy night.”

The wind abates and the whipping strands of her hair fall in frazzled lengths about her face. Though she is more made up and put together than she has ever been, she seems utterly disheveled; Dimitri has known enough of torment to fail to recognize it in another.

“Speak your mind, pro—” No, not professor. She’s told him too many times for him to forget. Still, her name feels too intimate; a prayer he has no right to speak. “Byleth.”

Her fingers curl against the stone of the banister. The nails are painted stark white and flecked with bits of stardust. Though attractive, the styling is soured by his memories of her dainty hands coated in blood, both foreign and his own.

When she turns to him, it is with the same softness she had maintained in the hours after Edelgard’s death, but now, unlike then, it is not for his sake; he suspects, from the slight tremor in her brow, the gentle expression is the only thing keeping her from breaking.

“I… I’ve been having dreams. Dreams of things that I should not know,” she says.

He gives voice to the beginnings of a question, but she speaks over him, saying, “Don’t ask me to explain. I can’t. But I, this isn’t the first time I’ve had strange dreams. Before the war, before I came to the academy, I dreamt of a battle. Long ago. And a girl.”

She hangs her head low, weighed down by whatever darkness haunts her dreams. He thinks of asking after the content but decides against it; if she wanted him to know, she would have told him already.

Far below, shouts ring out as Caspar chases after a stray cat with a chop of mutton dangling from its mouth. As he loops round and round in the torchlight, his shadow stretches and shrinks on the cobblestone. Once, he almost catches the mutton thief, but the cat darts between his legs and begins the chase anew. Soon, the two race away, Caspar’s yells echoing long after he has disappeared from sight.

In the silence of Caspar’s departure, Byleth says, “I don’t think it’s over.”

She sounds so defeated that instinctively, unthinkingly, he takes her hand in his. It feels the most natural thing in the world when her fingers, small and warm and rubbed raw by the brisk Fhirdiad air twist themselves into a tight grip around his. It doesn’t even surprise him that she returns the affection when it is the same she offered to him that night in the storm. Still, his heartbeat seems erroneously strong in his tangled fingertips.

“Whatever may come, we’ll overcome it,” he says, and he squeezes her hand, gently so as not to break her fingers. “Together.”

She sighs.

“Thank you, Dimitri.”

The time her hand remains in his stretches long and impossible. The whispering waters of the fountain, the murmur of music, the comfortable chill in the air, and the smell of fire and far-off celebration all make for a scene that would have been rather romantic. If anyone else held his hand just so beneath the smoky expanse of night, he might have been overwhelmed with the need to flee, but not with Byleth.

“I… Byleth…”

And when it is nearly impossible just to say her name, how can he confess the depth of his emotion to her? The thought, along with the willpower, dissolves on his tongue.

She stares at him. The entire universe seems to twinkle in her eyes. The music from far below has slowed and broadened. It urges him onward, but he cannot continue.

There is too much standing between them: five years spent apart, bodies stacked for the sake of the dead, a grievous injury, a soft refusal voiced in the symphony of the storm, a merchant kissed in—

Her head leans against his arm. Loose hairs spill over his plated regalia, snaring in the junctures of metal. Her thumb traces the length of his pointer finger and he can think only of how the mint of her hair clashes with the vibrant blue of his cuirass. 

“Is this okay?”

It is more than okay, more than he deserves, but he just nods and mutters a soft, “Of course.”

Soon, he is so stiff from the awkward position that his back aches. It would be much more comfortable to encircle her with his arm and allow her to lean against his chest, but he is too nervous, too unsure of her intentions. A single untoward motion and she could flee, leaving him emptyhanded and emptyhearted. 

So, he busies himself with thoughts of tomorrow, reviewing the progression of the day in great detail. There are recitations he must give and actions he must perform with exact precision and perfection or his rule could come under question.

His cabinet has assured him that no one would be foolish enough to challenge him, not after he led the successful unification of the continent and decimated the greatest military power Fodlan had ever seen, but he is not placated. Above all others, he must prove to himself that he can do it, that he is worthy of his father’s throne. 

“Dimitri?”

He hums in response, thinking of the lengthy tenets of divine rule he must cite to Rhea before receiving the church’s blessing over his reign.

Byleth shifts from his arm to look up at him. All thoughts of tomorrow evaporate. There is only her in the still air, illuminated by the sharp Fhirdiad night.

“I’m sorry for my behavior when I—”

She hesitates, mouth twitching as she mulls over her words. She barely reaches the top of his chest. If he wanted, he could engulf her fully within her arms.

“Invited myself into your room.”

The phantom memory of her thumb meandering about his face warms him. He lifts his eyes to the night above as he says, “Think nothing of it.”

Her fingers squeeze tight around his in two quick pulses and then she’s saying, “Forgive me for asking, but, if things had been different, say if I hadn’t been drinking that night, would you have kissed me?”

His mouth is so dry that his affirmation comes out much deeper than he intends, as if he had just awoken from a deep slumber. Immediately, he wishes he could leap into the air and smother the word before it reaches her, but it is too late. With the great unspoken thing finally spoken, he feels like a schoolboy caught with his eyes caught on a classmate’s exam. 

The cold stings every bit of his exposed skin. His eyes ache from the bright shine of the stars, but he makes himself stare into them as the silence stifles. His palms sweat and her hand, somehow still within his, is a phantom weight within his fingers.

“And now?” 

When he manages to look at her, she smiles.

Then, she is rising onto tip-toe, standing as tall as she can. Her fingers disentangle from his, rise to grip his breastplate and steady herself. And when her breath tickles his mouth and her eyelids are heavy with dusky promise, she kisses him.

There are no explosions of light or symphonies of sound that accompany her kiss. There is only the heavy beat of his heart and the weight of her lips against his. In every way, it is simple, but it is also perfect.

Dimitri is no stranger to kissing, but he thought it would be hard with her, like his feelings for her would overwhelm his ability to act and react. But it isn’t at all. Nothing about her is hard.

He draws away. Catches his breath. Stares. Leans into her again. Takes her into his arms, but she hisses and bumps against the railing in her attempt to escape his touch. His face falls in a flash of hurt and embarrassment, but then she is drawing his cloak around her, practically disappearing within the heavy fabric, and saying, “Cold.”

And she rises above the fur and kisses him again, soft and hesitant. He’s careful not to touch her, gripping the railing instead, though he longs to feel her fully against him. But he doesn’t push her. He will take whatever she is willing to offer.

Beneath the joy and thrill, something unspools, drawing the pieces of him further and further apart until he knows he’s touching and feeling and kissing her, but he cannot savor the sensation. He is far away, watching their embrace as an outsider, and longing to be closer.

Before he floats away into eternal nothingness, a burst of whoops and hoots rises on the stiff air and he comes back together in an instant. Their kiss breaks when he turns to find a small crowd pointing and waving up at them. Sylvain, red hair bronzed by the night, cups his hands over his mouth and shouts. Thankfully, it is lost to the wind. The others are blurred by shadows, but he can make out Felix’s sharp eyes and Bernadetta’s meek stature.

Byleth laughs and the sound is so sweet that he almost forgets his extreme embarrassment. Almost.

Sylvain shouts again, loud enough that Dimitri can make out the exasperated _finally _that echoes. He does his best to ignore Sylvain, lest he scream down at him and further complicate the situation, and focuses on Byleth.

Her face is flushed, definitely from the wind and maybe from him, and her hands twist in his, squeezing his fingers tight together. His cloak has fallen from her, revealing the pale sheen of her dress to the moonlight once more.

“Do you want to go somewhere more private?” she asks.

There is a cautious lilt to her voice that makes him shiver and he is terrified of her touch because he fears disappointing, but he does want to. Goddess, he wants to so badly.

But he is on borrowed time. It has already been a good while since he left, and a medical emergency can only last so long. They must be asking for him, demanding his presence so that they can continue to sow affection and establish their worth.

“I should return to the celebration,” he says and he hates the words as soon as they sound so much that he continues, “But after, if you’re willing—”

“Yes, I would like that very much.”

She kisses him once more, in parting, to the sound of more shouting from Sylvain, and then says, “I’ll be in my room.”

And it is hard, damn near impossible, to leave and focus on the fretting and fawning of nobles, knowing that Byleth waits for him. But he manages, somehow.

The walk to the grand hall is lonely. His footsteps echo despite the growing sound of the celebration ahead of him. Utterly alone for the first time since before the battle in Enbarr, Dimitri finds his steps slowing to a stop in the center of the long corridor. Amid the shadows of his childhood home, he remembers.

His father, tall and broad, like Dimitri is now, walking just ahead, chiding young Dimitri to keep up or fall behind. The guards, expressionless and mean, dragging Dimitri by the undersides of his arms as he spat and protested his involvement in the death of the regent. Patricia, wraithlike and silent, flitting around the corners, an eye always to her back, always away from him. Felix, weeping and snot-covered, chasing him with a large branch to beat him about the head with for a slight he can’t even recall. In one long hall, so much has happened.

The great doors open before him and memories skitter like spiders from his mind. Dedue’s massive form dulls the light spilling from the grand hall.

“The Lords have grown restless,” he says as Dimitri passes back into the party with a scowl.

Immediately, he is snatched up by a throng of nobility flaunting their wealth about their fingers and necks. They speak to him, asking after Hilda’s health, and he answers, but he doesn’t know what he says even after he has said it. Yet, they continue with their stuffy conversation, none the wiser.

Dimitri endures the long celebration in a state of disembodiment. He kisses ladies’ hands and debates with lords of the former Alliance, but he feels none of it as the minutes grow long and monotonous.

While nobles and commoners alike ply at his fraying patience, remnants of his past flit about the warm bodies, not as lingering aggressions or regrets, but as passing visitors, come to enjoy the celebration. Their forms are slick and glistening beneath the crystal chandelier. He fears for his sanity, but Mercedes’ voice rings in his head, assuring him that there exists no certain treatment for his condition, that he must learn to live with it rather than fear it.

Most of the fragments do not draw his eye beyond a quick glance as they are faceless, formless things that dart in between the partygoers without rhyme or reason. They do not approach him or even acknowledge. They simply exist, gathering unbeknownst to the living around them, seen only by Dimitri’s weary eye.

But then there’s her, a young girl, spinning alone on the bare dance floor. Though the candles blaze, she is shrouded in dark night. Long brown ponytails trail behind her head as she turns, arms draped around an invisible partner. Her face is tight and contorted in concentration.

She looks at him and says, “You’ll never learn if you don’t try.”

Soon after, he calls it a night, referencing the coming morning and long day, but, more than that, he needs to be away from these memories and these slippery-smiled people that refuse to leave him be.

Dimitri catches Dedue’s eye and then Dedue breaks through the crowd to escort him from the room. It is nice, this unspoken bond between them. All over again, Dimitri is relieved that Dedue is not dead. Until Dedue asks, “Did you have any success with the Professor?”

“You should know better than to meddle in other’s affairs, Dedue.”

Dimitri keeps his gaze ahead. He does not need to see Dedue’s small smirk to know that his muttered “apologies” is hardly sincere.

They walk in silence. Dedue’s stalwart presence keeps the phantoms, or whatever they may be, at bay. Dimitri fiddles with the hem of his cloak, busying himself with the rough-hewn fabric rather than disclosing the mingled giddiness and concern in his heart to his closest friend. He wants to confide in Dedue, but he is unsure how; he has never been much good at disclosing anything to anyone. 

When the fork between his room and Byleth’s lies before him, Dimitri announces, “I will return to my quarters later tonight.”

Dedue is quick to bow, but Dimitri catches a glimpse of the smile on the other man’s face before it vanishes.

As Dimitri continues down the dark hall alone, he keeps watch for the slightest aberration in the stone underfoot. He expects the dead to appear in an instant, trapping him within delusions of shattered honor once more.

But they allow him to progress in peace.

Byleth’s room is on the far side of the castle, nestled in the highest reaches of the keep in the north tower. When he was a child, he hated climbing the unending stares of the north tower, fearing that a ragged monster stalked him in the dark descent behind his back. He feels like that again, taking the steps nearly two at a time to escape the lingering blackness until he stands at their pinnacle. 

Hers lies the farthest away, relegated to a terrible view of the side of the main structure, but it was the easiest to defend, if it came to that. She seemed none the wiser of his intentions, but that was good; she would have raised hell otherwise.

It is hard not to run to her door and fling himself against it so as to imprint his form forever into the wood, but he does not want to appear overzealous. So, he maintains a steady speed walk and only knocks twice. He manages not to splinter the wood.

When he knocks, he has every intention of confiding in her the delusions he’s suffered, of suggesting they do not push his tenuous sanity beyond what he can handle.

But then she opens the door. And smiles.

Byleth still wears the gauzy dress from earlier, but her hair now hangs free and loose over her shoulders, slightly lank from its previous imprisonment atop her head.

“I didn’t expect you would be able to free yourself so soon,” she says, stepping back to allow him to pass. 

The room is meager and bare, but in the few days she has occupied it, she has filled it with her presence. Leather-bound books and crumpled letters dot the surface of her desk while her armor gleams in the corner. A long dress of mosaic greens and golds overlaid atop a field of white hangs from the top of her wardrobe.

“Rhea had that made for tomorrow.” Her voice is sour, as if Rhea had commissioned a noose instead of a dress. “I’m not one for dresses.”

Dimitri knows little of fashion, but he does his best to imagine how the fabric would cascade off her body, how the colors would catch in the cold light of dawn, how the softness would define all the edges and curves of her form, and, for the first time, he thinks, maybe, that it is a good thing she is not the one performing the blessing at his coronation; he might have found himself unflatteringly distracted. 

“What?”

Ah, he’s been staring. It’s always been a challenge for him to keep his gaze from her, especially when his mind takes to wandering.

“You’re beautiful,” he says.

It feels exquisite to say it out loud, akin to releasing a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. Her blush sends a shiver racing down his spine, but something in his stomach clenches as if he’s eaten something spoiled.

And now, faced with everything he could possibly want, he cannot feel his feet. In fact, he cannot feel anything beneath his knees, seemingly floating in a pool of viscous, invisible water.

The air around him is a stagnant haze from the flickering candlelight or the swirling inside his head, he isn’t sure. Distilled color floats in the haze like smudges on glass. Byleth is a slush of mints and whites and pinks before him. Only her eyes, like sigils of faith magic, remain clear and stark.

He blinks once, twice, three times until the fog clears and he can watch her move to him with proper sight. 

When her hands fully ensnare his and she murmurs a command to kiss her, his body reacts, hungry and visceral, as his mind teeters. He crushes her arms in his hands, squeezing tight enough to tattoo his fingerprints onto her flesh, and yanks her up to him, stooping to halve the distance between them. She gasps into his mouth and then her arms are stringing around his neck and drawing him closer.

Her tongue is soft against the dimples of his chapped lips. Her fingers knot in his hair until it sweeps down into his face and becomes caught within the frenzied back and forth of their lips. She is so warm and so much sturdier than he expected, the softness of her form buried beneath the coil of muscle, and he is losing himself, knowing that he exists here and now, with her, but flittering between future and past.

She kisses him and he is falling off a horse for the first time while Glenn laughs so hard he chokes. She kisses him and he is suffocating beneath the weight of his father’s crown. She kisses him and he is burning from a demeaning flick on the nose delivered by a chiding Catherine. She kisses him and he is pledging himself to a faceless woman he can never care for. She kisses him and he is looming over her, taking what isn’t his to take, feeling what he doesn’t deserve to feel.

Byleth pushes him against the bed, straddles him when he stumbles onto it, even when it groans out in protest. Her dress has ridden up around her knees; he knows because it bunches in his hands. Her hands are against his face, holding him, guiding him, and she is speaking through her kisses, whispering little words he can’t possibly comprehend into the sanctum between his teeth.

Fingers sliding through his hair. Lips smashing against his. Silk catching on his hands. Tongue roiling along the roof of his mouth. Breath fogging up his lungs. Teeth latching onto his lower lip. Hands lowering, lingering, on the expanse of his chest.

The sensation of her kiss is maddening, desperate and wet and strong and fast, so fast.

He doesn’t want to stop. Doesn’t ever want to stop, but can’t breathe. Can’t feel the weight of her pressed against him. Can’t sense his hands latched around the soft curves of her waist. Can’t find the edges of himself. Can’t taste the essence that she breathes into him.

He thinks, _stop stop stop stop._ He thinks, _her her her her._

Her lips leave his, trail little pecks across his jaw, burrow into his neck, mark him with teeth and tongue. A strangled gasp escapes from mingled pleasure and pain. Pleasure from her. Pain from them, staring, watching, hating. And how they howl and screech!

The dead. She was supposed to make them go away, but they’re here now. Bellowing. Condemning. They are a gathered mass of suffering, holding the severed limbs and heads of one another in hands and arms and mouths. They curse him for abandoning them to pursue such fleeting sensations. They demand he repent in blood.

Among them, Glenn is fuzzy, watching with eyes gelatinous from years of decay. His withered hand is over the wound in his chest, and thick, black sludge oozes between the splay of his fingers. The frayed muscles of his mouth move in guttural, intelligible noises of pain.

When Dimitri pulls away, he takes Byleth’s dress in tatters with him. The sound it makes when it rips is horrid as snapping bone and so loud that it must echo throughout all of Fhirdiad. 

And then there is only the sound of her breathing, airy and light and exasperated, and his, heavy and wet and frenzied.

He grips her arms, tight, tighter than he truly intends, until the room around her comes into focus. Her hands rise to cover his. They are so warm, so soft around the rough callouses. Her cheeks are splotched pink. Her chest heaves. Her brow furrows with worry lines.

“Dimitri? What’s wrong?”

The dress hangs from her body like strips of paper. Her undergarments are plain, but flattering, accentuating the parts of her he has imagined only in moments of weaknesses. There are no scars peeking from the swaths of skin. She is perfect, divine.

And he wants her, desperately, selfishly, his and his alone. The dead mock him, remind him of the night in the hidden cabin in the woods, of the sick satisfaction he’d gotten at watching her lurch, wounded and weak, across the room, and how, even then, he’d wanted her. Jeering and sneering, they call him an animal, a boar.

His name rings out again, but he doesn’t answer. Can’t answer. He cannot stop shaking. Why can he not stop shaking, damn it?

The dead draw nearer, forming a canopy overtop of them. They drool and they curse and they weep. Glenn is gone, replaced by the poor souls who had died before Dimitri ever got the chance to know them. But he knows their faces. He can never forget their faces.

Fingers knead at his face and he is certain that they have finally stepped from the veil to drag him into hell alongside them, but no. These fingers are warm, kind.

Byleth’s face comes into sharp focus as the dead fade away. Her eyebrows are drawn together, but they soften as he gazes fully upon her. His breathing evens until he breathes full and slow. He finds his hands, clenched tight around her wrists, and when he pries his fingers apart, her skin is worn pink where they had clung.

“You didn’t hurt me,” she says. “You didn’t.”

He swallows, nods even though he doesn’t believe her. The marks around her wrists grow darker, deeper, purpling from ruptured vessels and damaged flesh and undeserved pain. He should have known better, should have expected this.

“Are you alright?”

To tell her the whole truth would be to see himself undone in her eyes, so he couches it in a halfway truth, one that does not revel in the full decay of his soul. 

“I am unused to intimacy.”

Byleth nods and her face turns stony and solemn. She rises up onto her knees to hover above his lap and her hands slip from his face to coil around her torso. Without her touch, the tension in his chest unlocks in a flurry of panicked uncertainty.

He imagines her crossing the room, opening the door, asking him to leave, all in the tatters of her once magnificent dress. He knows if she asks him to leave, he will never be able to stomach looking at her again and the great _what if _will become the horrid _what was for a few moments before it was blown to hell. _

“May I hug you?”

As an answer, he draws her to his chest and burrows his face in her neck. For a long while, he clings to her, sobering himself with her presence, while she rubs at his back in long, smooth strokes. She hums, something throaty and haunting, and he thinks of all the choir practices he’d snuck into back in the Academy to hear her, of all the seminars attended on topics irrelevant to him to impress her, of all the tea parties attended to watch her, of all the bodies piled to honor her, of all the tears shed to forget her, of all the apologies voiced to befriend her, of all the gifts given to appreciate her, of all the walks taken to be with her.

But still, despite everything, he is a monster.

And he thinks of nights in the rain, a kiss almost shared, kisses definitely shared, time devoted, smiles exchanged, touches held, promises made, and he thinks, maybe, Byleth would have him anyway.

"I want to be with you,” he says.

She nods, presses a kiss to his cheek, and says, “We’ll go slow.”

And though he parts from her before the dawn, her promise is enough to get him through the lonely, cold night and the trials of the day to follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, this chapter is soooooo looooooong. This and the last one was all gonna be one chapter and like can you even imagine lol? This kind of took on a life of its own so that's pretty wild I guess. Like do i change the raitng to M??? I dunno at this point but proabably will so heads up for that  
But I'm excited for this chapter!!! Woo hoo for the long term impacts of trauma! Jk, but Dimitri is an endlessly fascinating character and I'm just glad his mental illness was handled well in game, especially given the series' track record with such things....  
But I'm real tired. I've been up since the wee early hours of the morning and I literally couldn't sleep until I finished this behemoth of a thing. So here ya go!! I hope y'all enjoy!!! I really enjoyed writing it!! I hope to hear y'all's thought :p


	10. Holy Ascension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A ceremony strains an already uncertain relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, ratings been bumped to reflect the developments of this chapter. Won't be bumped any higher than M.

On the shortest day of the year, the church of Seiros appoints a new Archbishop, three moons after Fodlan has coronated its new king. The date has been marked into every schedule and calendar in his possession since its announcement, but Dimitri is still unprepared; not for the ceremony, but to face her.

The cathedral has been remastered to the point that it is hard to imagine that it had ever been damaged. The ceiling has been repaired so that the flying buttresses stand strong and new. Twinkling lights, a trick of conjured fire, if Annette was to be believed, dust the ceiling between them overhead like captured stars. New stained glass drowns the sanctum in the colored visage of the Goddess, standing guard over her flock and looking uncomfortably like the new Archbishop.

People spill out onto the pathways and ramparts outside the cathedral. Children sit on shoulders and adults crane their necks to see the spectacle. The entire crowd is one single organism that reeks of cologne and poverty and gold and dirt. With all its blinking eyes and floundering mouths, it can only gape and gasp at the majesty of the ceremony.

Dimitri has been given special treatment, a pew right at the front of the sanctum. Dedue crowds the space beside him and, between the two of them, they take up half the wooden seat. A gaggle of children, orphans judging by their mussed-hair and poor clothes, occupy the other half. Every so often, one of the moppets will snicker or whisper too loudly and another will smack them, louder than whatever small noise they had made. Thankfully, Dedue serves as a formidable buffer between the children. Dimitri has never been good with children. They are small, fragile creatures; he is terrified of shattering them beyond repair. 

In the moments when the children behave themselves and the pomp and circumstance of the ceremony becomes overwhelming, his thoughts flicker back to hymns sung off tune before a wry smile and nights spent making mouths from a mountain of rubble. The cathedral has worn so many different faces that Dimitri isn’t sure which is its true form. The pristine chapel of his academy days? The dusty ruin of the war? The remodeled marvel of today?

“Not even the tide of unjust conquest could cripple the Church."

Byleth stands before the pulpit with Seteth over her left shoulder and Rhea over her right. With their hair a gradient of greens and eyes like arctic ice, they seem a trio of long-lost siblings, each personally blessed by the Goddess. Both Seteth and Rhea wear garments of white, but the color is off, slightly dim and muddy. Only the white of Byleth’s gown is unblemished, so pure and so white it burns.

The speech Byleth gives, allegedly penned and reformatted an infinite amount of times by Seteth’s hands, has been the subject of strife within her letters, but there is not a hint of disdain on her face as her promises for the future resonate in the holy air of the cathedral.

“This is the dawn of a new age,” she says and she raises her arms to the heavens. Billows of silk coast from her wrists and catch in the stained-glass light filtering in. The ocean of her hair, meticulously styled and delineated for the occasion, is adorned with wreathed gold and a smattering of lilac and cherry blossoms. Not even the dead of winter can slow the stampede of progress.

Rhea kneels before her and Seteth follows suit. The motion catches and then Dimitri finds himself stooped alongside Dedue and the rowdy children. Loose strands of hair whisper across his lips, tasting sour and metallic. All around him, the people clap and cheer. There is an old woman nearby who weeps.

With his head bowed and the sound of rapturous applause in his ears, Dimitri can think only of the last time he’d seen her, half a moon earlier at a hastily called cabinet meeting, and how she’d pressed him up against the back of a column when no one was looking and met his lips in a quick jab of a kiss. And though he’d fretted about in a daze for the rest of her short, chaperoned visit, the affection had gone unnoticed and he’d found himself wishing later that night that he’d taken full advantage of their companions’ indiscretion.

There are things he longs to do, made ever more ardent by Sylvain’s relentless prodding and suggesting, but he doubts his ability to do them. Thoughts of his own instability and her ascension to Archbishop circle each other like vultures over carrion within his mind.

The applause ebbs and then, in a flurry of shoving and pushing, Dimitri finds himself at the head of a line to receive the blessings of the new Archbishop.

“The grace of Sothis be with you,” she says, but she doesn’t look a thing like the Byleth he knows; she looks just like cold, aloof Rhea. For a moment, he sees Rhea’s sharpness about her smile and thinks that somehow Rhea has scooped out everything that made Byleth and replaced it with religious zeal and ardor.

Byleth’s smile wavers at his silence. He’s supposed to return her words to her, but he cannot, not when the situations he’s imagined unfolding between them to stave off the loneliness without her bloom bright and ardent in his mind. From over Byleth’s shoulder, Rhea’s eyes are narrowed down to slits. Surely, she can sense his sin, his lust for the Archbishop. He chokes through a haphazard response and then he is rushing against the tide of the devout to breathe the crisp winter air. There are murmurs that follow his retreat, but they fall quiet soon enough.

Dimitri slows to a halt on the bridge. He turns to grip the handrail. He grits his teeth at the twittering onlookers. Cracks feather out beneath his grasp as he stares into the chasm below.

In theory, it had seemed a simple thing to keep their relationship… tryst… fling? Whatever it was, it was a secret, sparing them both the trouble of dealing with fussy advisors and Seteth and Rhea, but now, it is a crushing weight upon his brow. Celibacy is an unspoken expectation for her now, something she has refused to address, choosing instead to press smudged, lipstick kisses where answers should have been in her letters. She has penned that she cares him, so much that she aches from being apart, but seeing her today, revered and deified, he wonders if she should know better.

His friends have been no help in the matter. Half of them swoon at the notion of forbidden romance, half of them tease him relentlessly; Sylvain drifts back and forth between the two camps, proving to be a veritable nuisance in every manner of life. Only Ingrid and Felix have said anything worthwhile. Ingrid told him to continue following his heart as it was the only way to be happy. Felix told him that, of all the atrocities he has committed, courting the Archbishop wouldn’t even raise a brow. And to be careful, though that bit of advice had been tossed out over Felix’s shoulder as he stalked away.

But the worry will not leave Dimitri, especially when the prospect of intimacy makes his mouth water. In the time since their last stolen encounter, Byleth’s letters have grown bolder, entertaining notions of things he has never thought possible. And it is a thrill to enjoy her written intimacies, but the reality of it is too much now that there is the distinct possibility of joining together in flesh and blood.

Beneath him, the canyon is dark and endless. Fog rises like phantom limbs from the depths, coating the bridge in a thick haze. Once, he had thought the view from the bridge magnificent. Now, he can only wonder what lies at the bottom.

Dedue’s shadow blocks out the tepid winter sunlight and Dimitri finds lips unloosing.

“None of this feels real.”

Dedue hums and Dimitri can hear the ruffle of his shirt as he crosses his arms over the broad expanse of his chest. Well-fed and exercised since his return, Dedue has only continued to grow bulkier. He boasts the sort of form that ancient artists might have dedicated their lives to sculpting.

“Too good to be true?”

“I suppose,” Dimitri says, quickly. But that’s not it entirely. It is all too good for him.

Byleth is willing to risk the sanctity of the church for him, no matter how bloodstained and disgraced he may be. And, somehow, it had never seemed serious until he had seen her ordained. 

The line dwindles behind him as the sun sets, but he cannot bring himself to move until a bright voice hails him.

Dimitri grimaces and turns to find Ingrid in her knighted regalia. She fists her hand over her chest and bows to him. He nods at the gesture, but the motion is stiff. He hates all the social nuances that have come with his coronation.

“All of us are meeting in the old classroom later, after the banquet,” Ingrid says. “To say goodbye.”

Sylvain had also mentioned something of the sort earlier, but Dimitri has no interest in attending. His old classmates are always finding ways to relive their academy days, usually by recounting tales of their antics, detentions, and successes, but it is a fruitless endeavor. The past can only ever be a memory. They waste their days chasing times when they imagined they were happy. 

“It is not being torn down,” Dimitri says.

Wrinkles fissure out from Ingrid’s squinting eyes. The sun makes her hair molten.

“But it won’t be the same, will it? No more Blue Lions.”

Dimitri shrugs. The prospect of being the last in a long line of Blue Lions’ classes does unnerve him, but the new house designations and assignments, the first changes of many in Byleth’s planned overhaul, are a necessary revision when the country is now united. 

“You’ll come, won’t you?” she asks. At his hesitation, she leans a little closer and whispers, “Byleth has promised to stop by.”

Dimitri crosses his arms and stares off into the abyss below. When he had written, hesitantly, if she believed they would be able to find the time for a few moments alone, Byleth had made no such promises to him. She had only written _if I should find myself so lucky. _

When Ingrid coughs into the front of her fist, Dimitri says, “I will make an effort.”

Ingrid’s mouth stiffens into a hooked frown, but she nods and says, “Then I will hope to see you there.”

She takes her leave into the streaming crowd, the heavy fabric of her cape swishing behind her like the tail of her pegasus.

“Do you truly have no intentions of attending, your majesty?” Dedue asks.

Truly, Dimitri does not. Only ghosts and dusty memories that he would sooner do away with await him in the old classroom. His academy days, though precious, are a shameful fiction. He does not want to reminisce on the boy he once was.

“Come Dedue,” Dimitri says. “The banquet will begin soon.”

And Dedue asks no more questions. His large shadow shades Dimitri as they make their way in silence to the mess hall.

When they arrive, the hall is mostly empty, save for bustling servants setting the tables. Cyril stands at the head of the room, barking orders to the scurrying mass as plates and glasses and silverware are meticulously arranged. Despite the glut of people, the mess hall seems empty without the massive banners that once hung from the ceiling and displayed the sigils of the three houses. So often, Dimitri had sat beneath the blue satin lion that he had taken its presence for granted.

Staring into the emptiness overhead, Dimitri says, “Perhaps we should wait out—"

There is a squeal and a clacking of feet and a flash of mint hair racing towards him. Two arms thump around his waist, capturing him into staying still.

“Oh, it is delightful to see you!” Flayn says, squeezing her arms tight around him once before moving to greet Dedue in the same way.

When she finishes, she beams and says, “Come, I will show you to your seats.”

Nearby, a servant trips and a tablecloth is yanked off the table in a flurry of clanging metal. Dimitri winces as shouts resound.

“We do not wish to impose,” he says, but Flayn tsks with a shake of her head, saying, “Nonsense! Cyril is just ensuring the final touches.”

Then, she flounces off through the hall, waving them forwards when Dimitri makes no move to follow.

“C’mon,” she says. “You will only be in the way if you remain there!”

Dimitri sighs, but follows, careful to avoid the feet and elbows of the frenzied servants. Each stops to bow to him and each time, he waves them off, telling them to continue. When he finally reaches the table Flayn has indicated, his brow has furrowed him into a headache.

Flayn pulls out his chair, at the center of the head table, and he sits, Dedue right beside him. Flayn clasps her hands together and then takes a seat diagonal to him. She says, “I tried to talk the chef into preparing fish for the banquet, but he insisted on steak. Can you believe that? There’s a whole pond full of fish right outside and he sends for cows halfway across Fodlan!”

He has no opinion, having no preference for any type of meat over the other, so he watches the servants finish their duties. Around him, the tables slowly begin to fill as Dedue engages in a debate with Flayn regarding the merits of fish over steak. 

Dimitri thrums his fingers against the table to the growl of his stomach. He has neglected to eat the entire day, focused on completing the long journey from Fhirdiad to Garreg Mach, and, with the servants receding, the smell of dinner slowly makes its way through the air.

The hall begins to fill and there is no logical order to the seating. Nobles and commoners, from all over the continent, sit side by side and, though some of the nobles scowl, there seem to be no squabbles about the arrangements.

A large party enters and the room falls silent. With mingling horror and longing, Dimitri watches Byleth, at the head of the group, make her way across the room to take the empty seat beside him. She smells of rich, heady oil. When she smiles at him, he can taste his heart on his tongue. Should he speak? What should he say? What would one friend with nothing to hide say to another?

Seteth takes the seat across from his, beside Flayn, and Rhea scooches in on Seteth’s left. It feels an inquisition of sorts. Perhaps they have uncovered the letters sent between he and Byleth and intend to reveal the indecency to the entire crowd. The news would spread in days. It would be a national scandal immediately; a threat to his already tenuous rule.

But Rhea only smiles with her lips pressed tight together and says, “What a lovely day this is.”

The table continues to swell with clergy and nobility, monks and knights filling the empty seats to his left, beyond Byleth, and Lorenz and Sylvain and Ferdinand and Petra, filling the empty seats to his right. They twitter amongst themselves about land and horses and women, but the buzz of their voices subsides beneath the honeyed melody of Byleth’s gentle conversation with one of the monks, asking after the health of one of their group.

There are attempts to draw him into mild conversation, but he fails at each instance, offering only terse, one-word responses. When the food comes, he eats rapturously, devouring the meat and potatoes as fast as decorum would permit. As he gulps from a glass of bitter wine to down the lump in his throat, Rhea asks, “Your majesty, can we expect you will honor the Aerilan Accords?”

If it is the conclusion to a conversation, he has missed the majority of it. All he knows for certain is that the Aerilan Accords demand the dominant power supply the church with any military might it may need. The entire table stares at him. Rhea’s hand is tight around the stem of her glass, but she does not bring it her lips, only stares with serpentine eyes. So, he nods and says, “My strength is your strength.”

It is a good answer, he can tell from the silken smile that stretches across Rhea’s face, and he does his best to match that pleased smile as he forces a spoonful of potatoes into his mouth.

Beneath the table, a foot brushes slow and hard against his, lingering too long against the hollow of his ankle. He jerks upright, thumping his knees against the underside of the wood and nearly chokes. Beside him, Byleth sips from a glass of wine and raises her eyebrows at him. Is she toying with him? Why here? Shouldn’t she know better?

“Are you alright, your majesty?” Dedue asks.

Dimitri’s face burns as he swallows and nods. Dedue seems unconvinced, but he does not pester, only narrows his stare into a glare. 

The rest of the banquet passes in jumbled conversation and flustered bites. Byleth does not touch him again, does not even speak to him, for the rest of the meal and only Lorenz continues to vie for his attention, asking after endowments and allegiances and elections and armaments. Every question is so damn incessant that Dimitri could weep in frustration at it all. 

When dessert, a puff of sweet cream and walnuts, comes and goes, Dimitri wastes no time in declaring his necessity to leave and attend to pressing correspondence. Of course, there is nothing of the sort, as Dimitri has been certain to take care of everything before the ceremony began, but he will utilize any excuse he can to escape Lorenz and the weight of Rhea and Seteth’s conjoined stare.

He offers paltry, impersonal goodbyes to the table, avoiding Byleth’s eye entirely, and stands free of them. From there, it is not an easy thing to leave the banquet as numerous nobles clamber for his attention, but Dedue rebukes them so that Dimitri can slink by and out into the corridor. Before he sets off, Dimitri chances a look back to the far end of the hall and finds Byleth entertaining the attention of a noble, a former Imperial judging from her white-blonde hair, completely oblivious to his departure. His recent meal squelches heavy and dense within his stomach and then he is turning on a heel and making haste for the third floor.

In silence, he climbs the steps, passing by the corridor to his old academy room without a sideways glance. He scowls at the ostentatious doors leading to the royal quarters. Fresh carvings depicting scenes of royal history decorate the heavy wood. They are a new addition, as most everything in the royal suite is, needed after Garreg Mach was ransacked.

If he had had a say, Dimitri would have protested all the additions to the royal suite, preferring the simple furniture and carpeting of his childhood. But he’d had no say and the royal suite had become a hedonist’s dream.

The knight of Seiros standing guard at the doors fists his hand over his chest and bows, but the visor of his helmet clanks down over his face. Undeterred, the knight shoulders open the door and chirps, “Nothing to report, your majesty!”

Dimitri nods to the man as he adjusts his visor and then says to Dedue, “Visit with our old classmates. Give them my apologies.”

Dedue nods and then bows, a hand fisted over his chest, before taking his leave.

“It’s a shame about the houses isn’t it?” the knight says as Dimitri passes into the suite. “Though, I suppose it had to be done and I don’t doubt that the professor, uh, _Archbishop _know what’s best.”

“Yes, quite,” Dimitri says and closes the door, slumping against the wood as its closing echoes. Today has been much more challenging than expected and being in this room that is both familiar and foreign only compounds his unease.

This room had served as his home at Garreg Mach, before he’d attended the Academy, since he was just a babe, only a few months old and still wet with the water of the womb. That first visit had kept him trapped for a week in the monastery for his naming and dedication to the Church. He had been forced into a cradle at the foot of the bed. And his mother, his birth mother, had sung lullabies to him while he squalled and kept the entire monastery sleepless and irritable.

Or so his father had written about once, long ago, in a letter to Cornelia, uncovered in the aftermath of her downfall. His father’s frequent correspondence with Cornelia was not the only secret revealed since Dimitri had ascended the throne, but it is the one that never strayed far from his thoughts. There is no hint of sugary language within the letters to support the idea of an indecent affair between the two, but there is something in his father’s reliance on Cornelia, asking for her opinion and seeking her guidance, that refuses to settle within in him.

Dimitri stands and then moves to sit at the desk. His skin prickles and he searches the room for the hint of a misty figure, but there is none. It has been a full moon since his ghosts have appeared to him in any true form. Only their voices come to him now, offering spite and hatred at random throughout his day. Still, he is not foolish enough to fall into complacency. Being in this room, where the walls hold memories of times past, puts him on edge.

Soon after his naming and dedication, his mother had caught the plague and died. He had never known her, could not even find a trace of her within the angles of his face.

To Cornelia, his father had written of a journal his mother had kept for him, detailing his daily moods, the books she read to him, and her observations of him up until the day she fell ill. No such book had been found, though he had asked, even reaching out to her house to see if it had been delivered to them after her death.

He rubs at his eye, leaning back in the chair and unlocking the pressure in his spine. His whirling thoughts are a pointless endeavor. There is nothing but headaches to be made from threadbare conjectures about his mother’s life. She married his father, she gave birth to him, and then she died. His father had never spoken of her and Dimitri had seldom thought after her when Patricia had always been mother to him, but it all seems to matter now that there is nothing to be done and everyone who might have revealed the truth lies buried.

When he slips into temperate dark, he does not notice. Only when hushed voices sound from outside the room, followed by a hearty rap on the door, does he jerk awake and realize he has been asleep. Outside, night has come with watery moonlight.

Dimitri stumbles to the door, irritated and sleep-stricken, and flings it open without care, only for his heartbeat to stutter and quicken at the sight of his visitor.

The headdress still adorns her hair. The long gown still accentuates her form. She smiles up at him and there is something cold, something bitter, hiding in the glisten of her eyes. He finds himself angry at her intrusion. The knight stands to the side of the door, watching them, but pretending not to. 

“May I come in?” she asks.

The question is unnecessary. Even irritated, how could he refuse her?

He steps aside and she breezes past. The knight gives him a thumbs up. Dimitri clenches his teeth until his jaw pops and closes the door more delicately than he truly desires.

When he turns, he finds she has taken up residence on the bed, settling atop the quilted comforter and fumbling with the straps of her shoes.

“I expected to find you with the others,” she says after working the first one free.

Dimitri has no response. She of all people should know that he cannot toast to the once mighty Blue Lion house when he has brought about its demise.

She turns her head to him and her hands raise to the headdress ensnared atop her head. He watches in silence as her fingers knife through the tangled locks. When she tosses the filigreed metal onto her lap, her hair hangs full and wild about her shoulders.

It seems wrong, somehow, to have her here, so loose and comfortable while so much uncertainty trembles his hands.

She stands and forks her fingers through the loops of her heels. Then, she moves to the other side of the room, where a chair sits flush against the wall. She discards the headdress and heels on the cushion. When she turns back to him, her fingers have disappeared behind the nape of her neck.

“Do you have any spare clothes? This dress is horribly uncomfortable.”

He is stiff, every muscle drawn tight and tense, when he asks, “Is that wise?”

Byleth purses her lips.

“Seteth and Rhea believe I have taken ill from stress and Shamir is covering for me.”

He wants to ask after Shamir’s involvement, dreading the notion that yet another person knows the extent of whatever he and Byleth are pursuing, but cannot muster the words when the dress slinks off her shoulders to lie in a ruffled puddle at her feet. Only simple undergarments keep her dignified. With the headdress peeking from behind her hip, he feels caught in some lurid fantasy, one dreamed up by Sylvain in his youth.

His mouth is dry. He wets it with the tip of his tongue. He gestures to the armoire where Dedue has taken the liberty of unpacking his things upon their arrival earlier in the day.

She draws an undershirt free of the folded masses and holds it aloft. The muscles of her back are taut. Her shoulder blades jut like wings. In the glisten of her back, he remembers a moment, years ago, after a swordfaire lesson when she had stripped free of her sweaty armor to reveal the smooth intricacies of her form.

She had apologized profusely the next day, expressing that she had never known the social constraints of such an action and that Seteth had been sure to set her straight, and Dimitri had made himself forget it to preserve her decency within his mind, though the image sometimes lurked into his nighttime musings. 

But he doesn’t think ignorance is masking her actions now. She is much bolder than him.

“What has kept you from joining the others?” she asks and her head bows to button the shirt. Her legs erupt long and milky from beneath it with lacework stockings climbing up to the underside of her knee.

“I was thinking of my mother.”

Her face is set in stormy repose as she fumbles with the hem of the shirt, flipping it right side out, saying, “We will find the truth. Rhea’s dedicated herself to uncovering the truth of everything.”

The sour tone of her voice draws his curiosity, but she says nothing more, only plays with a loose string off the cuff of the shirt. She pulls at the thread, drawing it longer and longer, and then rolls it between thumb and forefinger.

“That is good to hear,” he says. “But I spoke of my birth mother.”

The string falls from between her fingernails and he loses sight of it in the backdrop of the room. Slowly, she says, “You have not told me much of her.”

He does not know much of her. He knows her hair was strawberry blonde and her nose turned up at the end and her eyes were earthen brown and she had an affinity for horses and her name was traditional and that was it.

“She died when you were very young,” Byleth says like a memory. He cannot remember speaking to her of his mother before, but must have, at some point. Perhaps during a moment of weakness during his Academy days or during a fit of madness during the war. Regardless, the conversation is lost to him.

“Yes.” 

Byleth nods. She crosses her arms over her chest. The shirt rides up just above her waist, revealing the shining satin maintaining her decency beneath. He does not stare, though he takes his brief glimpse of the sight deep within the recesses of his mind, holding it there for a later date.

“That must have been hard.”

“I cannot recall.”

The silence stretches and he stands across from her and wonders if they shouldn’t be so far apart and if now is the time to ask after her intentions with him, but Byleth’s stare undoes him so thoroughly that his confidence and concern lie at opposite ends of his being with only impish anxiety remaining in-between.

“It has been a long day,” she says.

He nods. Swallows. Fidgets. She does not let up with her staring. Her eyes peel away the clothes and flesh and muscle of him until there is nothing left but dry bones, sizing him up like an opponent in the arena. He wishes she would shift foot-to-foot or sigh or move in some small way to release the intensity of her stare. 

“Do you not wish me here?” she asks.

He chews the inside of his cheek. He says, “I have longed for this moment.”

It is not a lie, but he has longed for it to be softer, sweeter; their reunion an overpouring of affection and sincerity so the memory can warm him during the cold Fhirdiad nights. And though their letters often read like text from a romance novel and led him to believe this moment could only be of that sort, it feels nothing of the kind. 

“Then why do you glower at me?”

He tenses because, yes, his eyes are squinted and his mouth is sharp and the expression has been so natural that he is shocked by its existence. Rebuked and remorseful, he moves to sit upon his bed and rubs at his face with the heels of his hands. He says, “The banquet was miserable, wasn’t it? To be beside you, yet apart from you.”

She is slow in responding, but she does, saying, “I felt much the same.”

Then, she is crossing the room, her footsteps a gentle patter against the floor, and falling about him the way she had the night of his coronation, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and resting her knees beside his thighs.

“But we are together now.”

With her so present before him, somehow, his worries and angers seem a little bit less dire. He moves his hands, though they tremble, to her waist, molding them to the supple curves he finds there. She kneads at his scalp, flits her eyelashes, which he sees now have been lacquered with a heavy black coating, and asks, “Can we try to—”

“Yes,” he says. He kisses her, carefully, slowly, as timid as his first kiss as a prepubescent boy had been. She responds in kind, kissing him closemouthed. Until he is certain the dead will not stray close, he maintains the slow, restrained pecks. Her fingers slip to the nape of his neck, holding him to her with her arms looped about him like a bow.

When the silence falls so thick that he can hear only the soft pucker of her lips on his and the wind whispering outside, he opens his mouth to her and draws her flush against him. Her soft sigh loosens his fingers from their shackled grip on her hips. One hand he uses to touch her jaw and tilt her back so that he can kiss her full and deep in the way he has seen other couples kiss, and the other he uses to caress her back, knuckling the ridges of her spine through the thin shirt. She trails behind his motions, always hesitating behind every touch he impresses on her.

She breaks the kiss, maybe to say something, but he fixates on her neck and whatever words she may have envisioned become a sharp gasp. He kisses along the smooth column of her neck, tracing the venous path with the tip of his nose. He has planned this out, steeled himself for each escalation of passion through rigorous imaginings and solitary practice.

Beneath him, she sighs. Her fingers stay locked within the tendrils of his hair. When he reaches the collar of her shirt, _his _shirt, she tugs at his hair in a silent plea. He shifts her off him, easing her down against the mattress and angling overtop of her. Her face is tinged and her lips are swollen, but she doesn’t reach for him. She waits, watching with glossy eyes as he fumbles with the buttons of the nightshirt.

“Is this alright?” he asks and she nods, her breath slow and easy between her parted lips.

And then he’s tearing at the buttons, ripping them from the fabric without much care, shivering at his own forceful actions. It is one thing when their interactions are dominated by his nervous crush or raw want, but the actual _having _gores him. There are two Dimitris: the physical body of need and desire, and the mental entity of reason and doubt. And the two muddled so easily when it came to her that he became lost in the mush. 

Byleth sits up, slipping her arms free of the shirt, and then lies back down, staring up at him through thick lashes. He stares until she squirms under his stare.

“So beautiful,” he says, though he does not think the words before they escape. She cants her gaze from him and her mouth pitches, disbelieving.

He presses his lips over the jut of her collarbone and she arches into him, huffing when he nips at the solid bone. There is so much smooth, warm flesh for him to explore and kiss that he becomes dizzy with possibility. He kisses along the length of her collarbones and up the front of her throat and along the curve of her ear and her hand is taking his, moving it off her waist to the swell of her bust, making his fingers curl into a wanton grope.

It seems too much, too soon, but the way she breathes at his touch is impossible to forgo. He captures her lips, kissing her so that he can take her tiny gasps and heavy pants within him. The edges of him are fuzzy, but he is mostly whole and mostly with her. There is a part of him that bobs in the murk of the past, straining to be free of such physical sensations, but it is easy to ignore.

She is the one to remove her brassiere, hands fumbling beneath her back until it pops loose, and she casts it aside with a fling of her wrist. He watches it sail, hook off the edge of the wardrobe, and then looks to her. His boyish imaginings have never done her true justice. She blushes and it colors her throat scarlet. 

“You can… you know.” 

He does know. And he does as best he can.

Her breathlessness makes him tremble. He wants forever to touch and kiss and caress every inch of her until she cannot breathe, but she pushes against him, flattening him on his back, undoing the buckles of his regalia and kissing at his neck and running her hands up and down the front of his chest and tickling his nose with her hair and the world feels like it is splitting over top of him. 

There is screaming in his head, whose screaming he cannot tell, as she teethes at the juncture of his neck and takes his pulse into the hollow of her mouth. The sensation is electric, shocking every inch of him with pure, carnal adrenaline, and he thinks, beastly and selfishly, how he wants her in every semblance of the word, but the screaming won’t let up. It intensifies into haggard sobs when her fingers catch and trace along a raised scar just above his hip. 

“I’ve thought of nothing but this, you, all day,” she says and he jolts. Had she thought of this, of him, while she’d uttered the sacred vows of the church? Had she imagined him beneath her, trapped by her hands and lips and hips, when she’d promised herself, body and soul, to furthering the teachings of Seiros? Had she looked to him when Rhea had cemented the headdress atop her head, offering an adjacent promise to him of bodily lust?

Her smile is sharp above him as he squirms. She leans down, captures his lips in a torrent of tongue and teeth. Gone is the shyness she had maintained and gone is his restraint. He holds her by the back of her head, mashing into her as if he could swallow the breath from her lungs and devour her screams. But she isn’t screaming. It isn’t her. He wishes it was. Her voice is so lovely, so much sweeter and huskier than the cooing songs of the nightingales. But she’s so quiet, just little huffs and gasps instead of moans and screams.

Is he not doing this properly? Doing something wrong?

His hands move, yank her head back so that her throat is presented taut and shining before him. He kisses, sucks, bites until her voice shakes beneath the smooth skin and rushing blood.

“Dimitri,” she says. “Don’t.”

He stops, just breathes hot and heavy above the wet mark of his mouth on her throat. Don’t what? Touch and kiss? Love and want?

He can stop the former two, but never the latter two. He has loved her since the moment she rose up from the dead, wanted her even longer. 

She kisses him again, finding his hands and locking her fingers within his. Then, she is shoving him down, down, down, and pining him to the mattress. He rocks up against her, but she presses harder, keeping him docile. Easily, so easily, he could lurch up, take her in any way he wants, because she is strong, but he is stronger. He doesn’t.

He stays beneath her and suffers her affections, twisting and shifting beneath the weight of her. There’s laughter now, shrill and bright and crazed, chiding him for lying prone and for believing himself worthy.

Byleth traces kisses off his mouth and down his throat. As the heat of her lips meets with the sensitive skin there, he turns to stare into the room, offering up a better angle for her to utilize. But there is a woman with a face of cobwebs rocking a bassinet beside Byleth’s discarded garb. A breeze flutters the translucent strings of the web and out leers Patricia, Edelgard, his mother all mangled together within the mess. A single word tumbles about between his teeth, bolstered by Byleth’s sweeping tongue on his neck, and it is the same thing Edelgard had sought: _desecration. _

“I can’t,” he says between breaths. Repeats it until Byleth hears him and recedes, slipping off him to linger on the untouched mattress by the headboard, arms crossing her chest to cover her nakedness. Her cheeks are flush and her face slack. And with the imprint of his teeth all over her, she says, “Too fast.”

Not a question. An expectation almost. The woman and the bassinet have vanished. It is only he and Byleth once more.

Dimitri sits up, crosses his own arms, and says, “No, it is not… I… you’re the archbishop.”

She stares with her lamplight eyes. Purple bruising dusts along her neck, growing richer and more pronounced by the second.

“And you’re the king.”

He says nothing. His chest heaves.

“If you wish me to leave, I will.”

The thought of her leaving is just as poisonous as the thought of her staying. He reaches for her and she moves to him, filling his arms with her soft skin and hard muscle beneath. She nuzzles her face against his chest and her fluttering eyelashes tickle. 

“What if, one day, I am no longer the Archbishop?” she asks slowly, arching her face to him. “That would uncomplicate our situation.”

“Only barely,” he says, thinking of her common name and nonexistent wealth. “But I can hardly imagine you as anything other than the Archbishop.”

Her mouth goes flat. Her face smoothens. She stares.

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” he says. “And that’s why we—why I—find myself so undeserving.”

Her hands take his, squeezing tight.

“Enough with this nonsense,” she says. “I want to be with you. You are kind and loving and driven and good and charming and handsome—”

The list of adjectives has a semblance of monotony to it, like she has rehearsed it, practiced it while staring into the mirror, used each word to convince herself that she feels something other than disgust for him. She snuggles up against him, wrapping her arms tight around his chest. Her breath tickles his neck as his heart strains to be against hers. He wonders if she can hear its whining.

He wants to ask what to call this thing between them. He wants to say relationship, yet balks because of its certain expiration date as, someday, he will be expected to marry and bear a respectable lineage, despite his qualms with the notion, but does she know that? Does she care?

She kisses at the curve of his jaw, light and delicate.

“The next cabinet meeting, I believe I might decide upon an overnight visit,” she says. She takes her hands from his and lays them flat and still over his chest. Her palm is warm over his heart.

“Yes,” he says.

And she stays with him until the night softens into early morning, kissing and snuggling and touching all the while.

When she finally leaves dressed in the garb of the Archbishop once more after kissing him goodbye one final time, he cannot make himself watch, only traces the path she takes on her way out until the memory fades into an uncomfortable, empty sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhhhhh, I'm so sorry for the delay. This chapter did NOT want to be written lol.  
I'm posting this in a rush so I don't have much to say besides ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I've also taken to playing with canon a wee bit, so enjoy that lmao.  
Ratings been bumped to reflect the developments in this chapter. Nothing too raunchy I feel, but still warranting a higher rating.  
Hope you all enjoy!


	11. Interlude II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time passes.

The first year of Dimitri’s rule over a united Fodlan progresses quickly. Each day is a new booked schedule and a new headache of issues. Headway has been made into eliminating the dregs of the empire and a tentative cessation of arms has been drawn up with Almyra, brought into existence by the maneuverings of its newly elected and awfully familiar king, while Brigid and Dagda have agreed to remain vassal states.

It is peaceful, for the most part. No situation requires Dimitri’s personal attendance, not when his knights are so capable.

~~~

He speaks to Byleth in letters, and she responds in kind, writing more fully and vibrantly than she ever talks.

Sometimes, she includes small doodles in the margins of her letters. Often, she draws herself with caricatured proportions and droopy eyes, performing the tasks she describes. His favorite of these is of her fishing into a few squiggles of water and standing beside a pile of fish taller than she stands with a blank expression.

Sometimes, she includes depictions of her surroundings, like when she roams the continent to bolster relations with the church, or lifelike sketches of animals she encounters. When he asks, she says she doesn’t know how or when she learned to draw, only that she can.

~~~

A riot breaks out in the heart of former Empire territory. He dispatches the knights to quell the chaos. It takes a moon, but it is resolved without much bloodshed. 

When the knights return, they report cloaked figures standing on buildings and lurking in shadows, watching the chaos like patient vultures.

~~~

As a peace summit with Almyra comes to a close, Claude pulls him from Byleth's side, says, “It feels wrong, doesn’t it? Like she should be here.”

He says no and Claude moves his attentions elsewhere.

~~~

Over a quiet evening of knitting, Mercedes inquires about his health. He tells her the ghosts no longer speak to him and that they still appear, sometimes, but only in moments of stress. She bobs her head and hums. She asks if he is sleeping. He tells her he struggles and the next day, she adds lavender tea and oils to his regimen.

Over time, his dreams of death fade until he dreams of nothing at all.

~~~

He learns that it is easy to touch, but not to be touched. His teeth crack at the affection Byleth gives to him with her fingers, lips, and tongue. And always always always, she asks to touch him, to return the favor.

Once, he lets her. Lets her do all the things she wants. And it is wonderful, glorious, blissful. But there is nothing beyond the feeling of water over his head when it is finished.

“You should not be here,” he says. “Should not do these things to me.”

And he cannot stop from there, calls her things he has ignored: holy, sacred, blessed, divine.

Cold and distant, she tells him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Tells him he’s wrong. Tells him he’s a fool to say such things. Tells him to shut up. Tells him he’s cruel. Tells him to stop treating her like glass. Tells him she can make her own decisions. Tells him she is not the Goddess.

He cannot move when she leaves him, cannot untangle the barbs she has spoken into being around him.

Only when she returns to him, quiet and repentant, can he move. He takes her into his arms and kisses her brow and tells her he is thankful every day that she deems him worthy of her affection.

It is their only fight.

~~~

Petra comes to him once, after a council meeting, after her union to Dorothea has been unreservedly denounced, says, “It is tough. To be loving what we should not.”

And she is right. And he tells her she is. And she smiles so sad and so little. And they do not speak of it again.

~~~

Byleth’s birthday approaches. He plans moons in advance, finagling schedules and asking Annette to take charge, supplying her with his grand vision. The end product is a simple, yet thorough tea party with all their comrades who could find the time to attend.

When the day comes, Byleth speaks little, but drinks easily of the whiskey brought by Sylvain. She offers sharp, full-toothed smiles at the small gifts and trinkets offered to her, even the few from him, and, when she hugs everyone goodnight, she breathes full and deep as if she were preparing to dive underwater.

Later, in the quiet of his bedroom, she tells him, unprompted, of the years spent without a birthday. Of haphazard dishes prepared by doting mercenaries. Of the teasing from other children. Of the nickname that branded her. Of the love from her father that she could never return.

It feels like a new beginning, when he holds her hand and rubs at her thumb with his, and she tells him of everything he’s been too unsure to ask.

But she is drunk.

And the next day, she does not mention the gasping breaths she took in his arms.

~~~

Dagda falls into civil war. Refugees stream into Fodlan with reports of mass bloodshed and absolute chaos and unknown figures untouched amid the carnage, watching with black rimmed eyes. 

~~~

He is the first to write it in the looping, spidery scrawl of a fast hand, wishing her well and longing to see her and saying he loved her. Dedue asks after his health when he sends the letter off to the monastery, noting his sweaty appearance and fidgety behavior.

He waits a week for her response, barely sleeping, expecting her to reject him fully.

But the letter she sends begins, _I love you too._

~~~

**The things she says she loves about him:**

His hands

His laugh

His hugs

His ambition

His honesty

**The things she asks that he cannot answer:**

Do you think this winter will be mild?

Where did you stay all those years?

Have you ever thought yourself married?

Can we ever stop hiding?

Did you love her?

**The things she will not speak of:**

Her mother

The Goddess

Her five-year slumber

The void

Her dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, how best to sum up a wide swath of time? Fragmented vignettes, of course! There's a lot happening in this chapter, though the content is rather small, but we gotta hustle on through to the next section and things get WACKY (in the sense that the canon ending is just a small speck in the rearview mirror and I'm EXCITED lol).  
Also, I've become obsessed with this kind-of AU with Byleth being mistaken for a witch with Dimitri witnessing her walk from the flames instead of getting burned at the stake and with an unfolding plot of CONSPIRACY and INTRIGUE lmao. So basically, expect to see this incredibly self satisfying piece of drivel posted in the future lmao.


	12. Subtle Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uncomfortable conversations occur.

**III. The Beginning**

Dimitri sits on the edge of his bed, listening to the chatter of his thoughts over the pulse of an unbearable headache. He had not slept well after the news of upheaval along the border with Sreng had broken the night before, just as he was taking his dinner. It did not help that the council was amassed in the capital for its monthly session, expecting an immediate response to the threat. And he had done what he thought best, sending reinforcements to maintain the border and a delegation to ascertain the nature of the unrest, but there was only tepid approval from the majority from the counselors. And none whatsoever from the Adrestians. 

As the sun begins to dim beyond the frosted panes of his bedroom windows, he fists one hand his jaw, keeping his head upright, and uses the other to display a request for the crown’s intercession in investigating a plague upon the wildlife in former Alliance territory. The letter is stamped with the seal of House Gloucester, but Lorenz had raised no such concerns before the council earlier that day. It is a ploy of some sort, but Dimitri has never been keen to the maneuverings of the gentry. He tosses the letter aside and flops backwards onto the plush of his bed, making a note to ask Gilbert of his thoughts on the matter.

When the request comes to meet on the balcony, he is slow in going, wanting to enjoy a few more moments in solitude.

But he knows better than to disrespect her.

So, a few corners turned and blurry ramblings thought later, Dimitri finds himself standing and overlooking the ice-shrouded valley below, withstanding the bitter cold and thinking of things he should not, given the woman beside him. Perhaps it is the joyous announcement of Annette’s pregnancy that morning or perhaps it is his own fetid unhappiness that overrules his better judgment, but he cannot stop the longing, cloying thoughts that paint themselves in his mind’s eye, overtop the waves of snow far below him.

He sees her, standing before the frosted glass, arms crossed, hair loose, with a silken gown, grand and ornate, drooped off her frame. When she turned to him, the burn of the setting sun glimmered around her form, cast her face in shadow and turned her from woman into electric silhouette. She smiled, bent her finger, beckoned him to her. Made him stoop, held his face between her warm hands, kissed the corner of his mouth, just where his small smile turned back into skin, said, _“I love you.” _

And he sees how she compelled him, shed the gown so that her nudeness glowed in growing twilight, scars and softness blending into one cohesive her, and stripped him of his own regalia, pressed her mouth to the places that were jagged, guided him to where she wanted until the edges of him blended into the sky around them and his fingers hardly felt while his heart was so erratic, and asked, _“Is this okay? Is this too much?”_

It wasn’t and it was. He was terrified to hurt her, blemish her, tarnish her beyond repair, even if every thinking, breathing, living part of him wanted her in every sense of the word. But he hadn’t said anything. Had let it progress as far as it could until it couldn’t anymore.

Now, he feels the same tightness in his throat as when the headboard had broken off in his hand and how he’d been unable to breathe, sent into the throes of panic at the sight of her red-faced surprise, her full, swollen lips parted in a flabbergasted “o,” the most severe expression he’d ever seen on her. She had sighed, brought his forehead to rest against the hollow of her neck where he could steady himself in the rich scent of her.

And he doesn’t remember what she said to calm him, only the slow back and forth of her hand between his shoulder blades and the whisper of her breath over his hair.

Beside him, in the sharp winter light, Rhea sighs so that the air condenses into a little cloud about her head before dissipating into the thin sky alongside his memories of that night, the last time he had been with Byleth. And Goddess, why is he thinking of it now?

All day, he had stared at Rhea and doubted her reason for coming being a busyness on Byleth’s part, but it wasn’t until he stood alone with the woman that his mind wandered to these impure thoughts of physical intimacy.

When Rhea hums a note and looks to him, he fears his body has betrayed him and revealed some tell that has keyed her into his indecency. But she only tilts her head to him in a way that makes her smile seem natural, even though he suspects it is not, and says, “Too many complain of the winters here. I have always found them quite beautiful.”

Dimitri swallows, nods. Up close, he can see that she has, well, withered is not the nice word, but it’s the best word. In fact, she has slimmed so considerably that he feels as though he is looking through the distant past to the day she had been freed from beneath Edelgard’s thumb. Every inch of her had been jutting bone and her skin thin as parchment, but her face had been rosy as ever and Sylvain had muttered to him, _“How can she still look so damn lovely?”_

Rhea doesn’t look quite as malnourished now, but there is a shadow about her, something he cannot place. There seems to be no reason behind her desire to speak with him. Nothing extreme had been revealed throughout the duration of the council, except for the news from Sreng and a few missing children in former Imperial lands, but even with all that in mind, he cannot think of a single thing they might discuss that would require privacy. At least, he cannot think of anything pleasant they might discuss in such a manner.

“Byleth intends to weaken the church.”

Dimitri gives no response. He watches Rhea carefully as she speaks, mulling over her words and fearing the worst. If she believed he was manipulating Byleth into working against the church, then there would be a revolt. It was the exact reason why he could not dare to make his love public.

Once, when they had first begun, he had explained to Byleth the exact nature of the thing, telling her, _“There would be rebellion, maybe war. And I cannot bring that to Fodlan once more.” _

And, now, he cannot remember what she had said in response. It is these little things he is always losing; the things that are never important until they are gone.

“Maybe it is necessary,” Rhea says. “Just.”

Rhea leans over the railing so that her hair hangs low about her face. Her expression is stony and solemn without a touch of humanity to melt the ice of her eyes. When an errant cloud blots out the sun, he could almost mistake her for Byleth, with their hair and their faces so similar, if he so desired.

“The world is different than it once was.”

If he didn’t feel like he was boiling alive inside his flesh, he might have laughed. She couldn’t be more correct. The world had been completely flipped upside down. And his advisors never let him forget it. Often, he felt impressed beneath an impossible tide that forever kept him from progress. This somber, shadowy Fodlan is not the one he desires, but it seems the one he is destined to care for.

“But she does not know the things she does.”

There is a sting to her voice, some hidden poison lurking beneath the veneer of concern that cuts through to Dimitri’s beating heart. His fingers ache for Areadbhar. He does his best to keep the quiver from his voice when he asks, “Has something happened to Byleth?”

A gust of wind sweeps the hair from his face and makes his eyes water. He blinks away the moisture, but it catches on the tips of his long lashes, turning to tiny icicles in the unwavering cold.

“The role of Archbishop is strenuous for the inexperienced. She is resting.”

Rhea is slow in choosing her words, mulling over each in brief pauses. There is more. There must be more.

Byleth has written sparingly of suspicion and paranoia. Little interjections of thought smattered throughout her letters between descriptions of the cat responsible for stealing her fish and laments of her tedious schedule. Things like _I find myself thinking I cannot trust anyone _and _Why must everyone lie when they have no reason?_

“Resting?” Dimitri repeats.

Rhea does not nod when she confirms the notion, only voices a simple _yes, _and stares at him. It is the staring he hates and the tiniest pitch of her lip downwards, a blemish of disgust on the woman who had set the precedent for forgiveness.

Then.

“I would ask something of you.”

He keeps his mouth even, gestures for her to continue, and does his best not to bite through his cheek when her eyes bore through him with new intensity. 

“Do not encourage her. She means well, but she does not understand. The truth would destroy her.”

Dimitri crosses his arms and shifts his weight. He should know better than to be so blatant in his gesticulations, but he cannot act in any other manner. Rhea has always made him feel like a floundering child. Still, he does his best to smile good-naturedly when he says, “I am afraid it is I who does not understand.”

“She will want to investigate these missing children. Do not let her.”

And though his mind lurches into a flurry to uncover the source of Rhea’s concern in the missing children, Dimitri laughs, a clipped, conversational laugh, and uses his hands for emphasis as he says, “I have no say over the wills of the Archbishop.”

And he doesn’t. He really, truly does not. She had grown mouthy in her affairs, telling him of times when she set this minister or another in their place with harsh words and a harsher stare. And so often, he shares his fears for her safety only to receive a lukewarm nod and promise to be careful in response. But he has no faith that she keeps her promise. She is a master strategist and warrior, but has no care for her own wellbeing. Too many times during the war, he had watched her run headlong to intercept entire battalions on her own. At times, her recklessness had only ever been outpaced by his own. Still, he had learned from experience that even the most stubborn of creatures could be reasoned with and—

Rhea touches his arm and her squeezing fingers shift the plating over his wrist until it pinches his skin beneath. And within her luminous, merciless eyes, Dimitri finds the knowledge he has long feared; the truth of he and Byleth.

He knows his smile is slackening and his eye widening, but he is helpless to erase his apparent horror. Behind her blasé expression, Rhea holds the knowledge to destroy every facet of his life.

But they’d been so careful, so meticulous. There were times when Byleth had come to Fhirdiad, and he hadn’t seen her outside the council chambers, though he had half-formed imaginings of amorous embraces interrupted by a page or counselor or even, once, Gilbert, which had sent him reeling without a proper explanation amid hundreds of suspicious eyes. Only a handful knew, and he trusted them all with his life. But maybe they had blabbed. Maybe someone _had _seen what they shouldn’t. Or maybe, even Byleth had let something slip. She had a penchant for nonchalance. Maybe it had come out in casual conversation and she hadn’t even realized.

Maybe after maybe tumbles about in his head until Rhea’s gentle voice, coupled with another squeeze of his wrist, stilts his thoughts into nothingness.

"You are a good man,” she says. “And you can be a good king, like your father—”

Her hand moves from his wrist, comes to rest on his cheek. Her thumb flits along the blade of his cheek as her mouth softens into the kind of smile his stepmother used to give him, muddled and distant.

“—if you only listen to me.”

Her hand lingers, hot against his face, for a moment, before lowering. Dangling, taut and smooth, at her side. Phantoms of the old him rise in his belly. His fingers hunger for the smooth column of her neck. He feels a skittish beast, half tempted to vault over the railing into the snow far below and half tempted to crush her ribs between his fingers,

But he is not that man anymore.

Dimitri exhales, forces a smile, says, “I will consider what you have said.”

When Rhea speaks, he does not hear her words. He only sees her through the haze of a memory from his academy days.

_Her, Rhea, standing atop the steps leading into the monastery, her arms outstretched, her palms towards heaven. And her, Byleth, heavy as hell in his arms, her eyes closed and peaceful, her hair new and mint splayed over his shoulder. And tears on Rhea’s face as he climbed step after step towards her. And Alois, taking Byleth from him, and—_

_Felix told him later he’d bared his teeth at Alois, but he didn’t remember—_

_And her, Rhea, trailing the backs of her fingers against Byleth’s slumbering face and saying, “She is risen.” _

Soon, he stands alone in the mounting cold. He does not know when Rhea left, only that she did and that he bid her farewell. He rubs at his face and the cold stings the roughened skin. Dedue calls his name, informs him that dinner sits ready.

Dimitri dismisses him, striding past with the tight, tangled turmoil of a man lost at sea. He takes the long corridors faster than he should, whipping around corners in a way that will certainly draw sordid talk.

The knight standing guard over his bedchambers offers him a cheery hello, but he ignores her, throwing open the doors with little grace or decorum. He snatches parchment from the drawer of his desk, a pen from the same place, and writes as he stands. His anger, hurt, terror, confusion all mingle together to spur his words and he scrawls in smeared ink, _Rhea knows. Did you tell her?_

Then, he folds the parchment and barks a command for the knight standing outside his door to send it on to Garreg Mach, for the Archbishop. Tomorrow, he will write kinder words, but tonight, he takes solace in his quick action. He needs to know that he has not made a mistake in trusting her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hnnnnn, life is hard. Doing my best to keep up with this. Hoping to return to posting at a regular rate soon!!
> 
> Rhea is an interesting character, ain't she? She'll be playing a bigger role in this story than I originally anticipated so we'll see how that turns out!
> 
> Also, if y'all are looking for some saucier Dimileth I just updated my long-dormant, smutty angst fest fic so yay for productivity!
> 
> I hope y'all enjoy!! <3


	13. Troubling News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath of an attack.

It is an unassuming, drooping afternoon on one of those spring days when the thaw has been long broken, but the sky is still gloomy, that the news arrives. Dimitri sits in the throne, holding court when the messenger, dirty and frantic, barely coherent, barely sane, brings the latest. 

_An attack. _

_Smoldering ruins where Arianrhod once stood. Bodies charred like hunks of meat. Smoke and ash and death. An unknown enemy to blame._

_Nothing like it before. _

_Blades of light falling from the sky. Splintering the earth and blistering the air. The fires still burning. _

_We don’t know._

_Few unharmed. Untold casualties. Too many unaccounted for. _

Dimitri is given a list of names, the confirmed dead, injured, and the missing all bunched in neat lines. Too many, he recognizes: Knights of Seiros, devout nobles. Rhea has been marked injured and noted as comatose. Flayn has been marked injured and noted as shellshocked. Seteth has been marked missing. And, when he finally acknowledges her name circled among the missing, he can only nod to the messenger. Areadbhar twitches like a child’s uncertain wave in his grip. Dedue offers gentle comfort. Felix swears death upon the perpetrators. Gilbert advises a level head and clear heart.

And, after the debates on what to do and the discussions on what will happen and the declaration that the kingdom will not rest until the attackers are found, when Dimitri finds himself alone in his bedroom, he does not cry. Does not pray. Does not eat. Does not sleep. He gathers her letters from the secret place where they hide and reads through them, one by one, running his fingers over the indents of her words over and over and over until all he wants is to kill the way he always has, but so badly that he can taste it, really _taste _the acrid smoke and bitter blood of fresh kill for the first time since the war has ended. 

They had been fighting because she had _told _Rhea of the thing she swore never to tell anyone, writing: _she has been my only support in these trying times. _And he had written back accusations of foolishness and she had responded with equal vigor. It hurt, a deep, soul-hurt, to quarrel with her. The thought of her as upset and alone in the great hollow of Garreg Mach as he was in the greying cavern of Castle Fhirdiad kept him awake into the night. So, he had written her a promise to discuss the issue in person, after her trip to Arianrhod. But a response never came.

It might never come.

He takes solace in the letters written in a gentler time, when she had written of her days and the weather and drawn small fictions of her daily activities. She had never drawn him and it never has bothered him before, until now, when he knows she might not ever. To see himself rendered through her eyes, would be the greatest honor. And it is a selfish whim, but it is the one he clings onto.

That night, he falls to exhaustion with the letters tear-stained and crumpled about his prone form. When he wakes, restless and dreamless, they sit accusatory in the dim morning light.

No news comes with the rising sun and he expects no less. He has lived this before; he knows how it must unfold.

Slowly, days pass. The knights scour the continent for the perpetrators. Suspects arise as reports trickle in, mages with histories of disdain towards the church and conspirators among the ranks of Adrestian nobility, yet a solid, true answer seems unattainable. 

In the third week, Seteth’s body is uncovered from the wreckage and Dimitri swears he hears Flayn’s keening halfway across the continent. Two days later, he attends the funeral at Garreg Mach and is driven into a quiet mania by the sheer, overwhelming absence of Byleth in the hallowed halls. Afterward, Flayn catches him in a hug about the waist and sobs into his chest. And he can only loosely wrap an arm around her to keep her steady while he breaks in two.

That night, he swears to go to the ruins of Arianrhod and claw through the rubble himself for answers, but Felix yells at him when he tries to leave.

_"We do not know who or what did this,” _Felix shouts. _“For once in your life, stop and think. Think about the consequences.” _

And he does. And he doesn’t go. But it still feels wrong. Byleth would look for him, if the roles are reversed.

After a month has passed, on the first night of the Great Tree Moon, Dimitri stands beneath the full-bright sky of Fhirdiad, sipping from a cup of boiled angelica and thinking of memories spun happy and nostalgic, and says to Dedue, “If she is truly gone, I will stop drinking this.”

Dedue sighs and his long, candle-cast shadow shakes its head.

“She would not want that. You know this.”

Dimitri does know, knows better than anything. But still, he says, “Perhaps it is what I want.”

No more conversation floats between them until Dedue takes the empty cup from him when he finishes and says, “There are many who care for you. Please, lean on us when you are in need.”

Dimitri nods, promises to confide in his friends, but knows he cannot. There was a time when he thought, maybe, it was possible, but not now, not when speaking might unknot him completely. 

Later, beneath the heavy weight of his duvet, he lies on his side and watches the pulsating stars between a sliver in the curtains and thinks of sharp hooks baited with squirming worms, hot tea taken with aerated scones, wet kisses exchanged with solemn goodbyes, and soft words spoken with undeserved sincerity until he fades. And teetering on the precipice of troubled dark, he is not the sovereign Hero King and hero of Faerghus, but only himself, only Dimitri. And lonely. And insurmountably sad. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eek! This is a teeny little chapter, but it sets the rest of the plot into motion. 
> 
> Also, Seteth :( I have very legitimate reasons for doing this so trust me when I say, it makes me horribly sad to murder grumpy green man :(
> 
> I'm honestly just planning to start posting chapters as soon as I'm done with them so that means there's not going to be a strict schedule, but I'm hoping to get through (at least) this next section before my classes start back up again. Also, this is probably going to end up around 20+ chapters because I keep adding to the plot :o
> 
> As always, please feel free to share your thoughts with me and I hope you all enjoy! And I promise it's going to get less overwhelmingly depressing and angsty in the next few chapters! :3


	14. Strangled Moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A nighttime visitor.

The Sword of the Creator is found. _Has_ been found for a long time. Uncovered the same time as Seteth. And Dimitri learns of it by accident when Mercedes comes for a visit and complains to Dedue of how it has been hidden away in the Holy Mausoleum once more. He hadn’t meant to lose himself, but he had. The things he said, the accusations of collusion and threats of war against the church, against everyone truly, he knew, even then, were the very reason the truth had been hidden from him. He was, is, will always be irrational. Unstable. And if it had not been Mercedes, sweet, soft-spoken Mercedes, who had stomped her foot and rebuked him sharply, saying, _“We are **all **hurting,” _he might have grown to mean everything he said.

Somehow, someway, Dimitri manages to not fall to pieces. He has maintained his presence among his advisors and before his subjects. Only those closest to him, Felix, Ingrid, Dedue, look to him with concern, waiting for the inevitable break. But it hasn’t come. If he can help it, it never will. He is tired, but, for Fodlan, he perseveres. And pretends. It is this delusional pretending that keeps him sane best of all. Though never known for an overactive imagination, he finds himself capable enough of it. There is so much he must deny that reality has become a plaything.

It has been three days since and, not for the first time in these three days, Dimitri cannot prevent his thoughts from slipping. Within the hot waters of a bath, he imagines the Sword of the Creator, _her _divine weapon, slumbering, yellow and still, in dark, stale air, waiting for a wielder that would never return. Whose decision, he wonders, was it to bury the truth of the thing so deep that it could never reach the light? A collusion of scrambling priests controls the church, given the current Archbishop’s disappearance and the former Archbishop’s coma, but he doubts their ability to agree upon anything, much less something of such a grave nature. Perhaps it is standing doctrine. Perhaps it is a pointless thought. After all, it has been another excruciatingly long day in an excruciatingly long week.

Dimitri takes a bar of soap from the rim of the tub and rubs at his face until his skin stings. Then, he sinks beneath the surface of the water. In the weightless abyss, his strength and finesse become inconsequential. With only the breath caged inside his lungs to buoy them, his limbs bob like the tendrils of some long-forgotten beast. Lost and floating, he imagines himself reborn amid the watery dark.

But he emerges the same as he entered.

Sighing, Dimitri stands from the bath, careful not to lose his balance, and then he listens to the _drip drip drip _of water plinking from his body back into the still waters. The air is thick with the scent of soap and lavender. Slowly, he dries himself, careful to daub dry the thick scars from fire and war that lash his body like ropes. All alone, he hums to stave off the mania budding in his skull. Humming, he has found, is simple enough to perform with ease, but consuming enough to keep him from dwelling on the simmering darkness. He isn’t sure of the tune, though it is something he has heard often, most likely a favorite of the court musicians that plague him during meals and gatherings. He scrubs at his dripping hair with a small towel, muffling the sound of his mindless humming. Soon, rivets of cooling water cease their journey from the end of his hair to the canyon between his shoulder blades. The towel, he tosses aside, before he opens the door out of the bathroom. 

Steam precedes him, gusting out into the dark of his bedroom like a wayward ghost. Across the room, the canopy of his bed shifts, beckoning him with the promise of silk sheets within. But, first, before he seeks rest, he turns to the tub and, with hooked fingers, he fishes for the latch. When he finds it, he falls silent as the water glubs down the drain. He waits, watches, until the last of the bath typhoons down into the drain, vanishing with one last wet suck of noise.

He dresses haphazardly for bed, not caring whether his shirt is right-side-out or backwards and relishing in some sick satisfaction at the thought of his steward’s certain disgust at the sloppy sight of him. Of course, it helps that Dimitri is alone, having dismissed his steward and staff from his quarters indefinitely after the last panic he attack had suffered, nearly a week passed now.

Within moments after dressing, he burrows into the smooth embrace of his bed, letting the silk cool the parts of him that still burn from the steam of his bath. Sleep finds him easily, but not peacefully.

In his dream, he kneels beside a stream gnarled with brush and algae. He plunges his bare hand into its black-blue depths and snatches at something, a flashing fish, smooth with slime. The fish fights against his grasp, but it is fiercest of all as he brings its red-sunset belly, stark bright even in the muddled moonlight, to the swell of his lips. Its tail smacks against his ear until his heart thrums in tandem with the whacking. Then, he sinks his teeth through its steely scales into twisted innards that ooze like oil over his tongue. He takes another bite. River slime and warm blood gush from the corners of his mouth and bleed down his chin, dripping back into the raging current beneath him. The fish’s bones snap between the tombstones of his teeth. Even without taste, he knows the marrow within to be sweet. The fish thrashes in its death throes until he eats away its belly up to its spiky spine. When he tosses it aside, its remains sink beneath the muddy riverbank with a squelch.

The river laps at his waist. He lurches into it for another offering, but falls, splashing into the current, his hapless body becoming one with the river. And thunder breaks overhead and the sky splits into a thousand, brilliant pieces, and as the world ends above him, he drowns.

So, it comes as no surprise when he jerks awake in bed, a shout mangling his breath. Already, his dream is vanishing into the sleep-addled ether with only the stink of river mist remaining in his mind to prove its existence, but the terror refuses to leave him. It only intensifies when he shifts onto his back and discovers the shadow looming at the end of his bed.

Instinct drives his hand beneath his pillow to the cold-steel promise he keeps hidden beneath and then the world around him blurs in an invisible wind. He is throwing the knife and stabbing with the knife and pulling it from underneath the pillow and tearing into malleable armor and wetting his hands with blood and waking up and falling from bed and throwing the knife and lurching at the shadow and choking on his fear and throwing the knife and jerking upright and the torment only stops when the shadow speaks to still his hand.

It happens like this: Dimitri wakes for the last time and he senses the presence and he reaches for the knife and he doesn’t throw it because the shadow speaks in a low, throaty voice that cannot be to say, “Dimitri.”

And it has been so long since he has heard that voice that he falters long enough for the shadow to take form and when the knife falls from his fingers, he has no thoughts of reclaiming it. It would do him no good, not when faced with the ghost of her. And he chokes back a sob. All pretending corrodes in his mind. She must be truly, thoroughly dead to appear here before him. There is no getting around it.

“Dimitri,” she says and she is so close and her face is so much like he remembers that he cannot stand it. Horror curdles his stomach, the same as it had the first time his father had appeared to him, so many years ago.

The first thing he does is gasp aloud. The second thing he does it cover his face with his hands and close his eye, blocking the ghost from his sight. He breathes sharp and fast through his fingers until they are slick with aerosolized spittle.

She speaks again, but he cannot hear. His mind is filled with the tolling of bells and the buzz of a swarm. Goddess, he wants to die. He wants to be with her. He wants to stop _being. _

He cannot breathe. He imagines himself still beneath the waters of the tub, turned blackened and viscous by the open wound of his right eye. If he screams, would anyone hear? Or would the water rush in to engorge his lungs until they popped?

Her voice, again. Goddess, please. Yes, he had told Dedue he would stop taking his medicine, but that was a bluster at best, a joke at worst. He _has _been taking it and taking it so diligently to stave off this very moment. His past has left him be, the ghosts utterly silent, almost respectful of his grief. So why must she appear now, when he has just begun to learn how to coexist with the emptiness?

Warmth prods, touching at his fingers. It pries at the cage he has constructed about his face, one stiff finger at a time, until he is far too weak to maintain the rigidity.

Her voice, his name. Soft wet against his brow. Crushing weight overtop his waist. His body shakes and his eye burns from the strain of keeping it closed. His mind floats somewhere between the two, denying the truth of his madness.

“Please, Dimitri. Please look at me.”

Everything about her voice is wrong, ragged and worn, not soft and subtle like he remembers, but somehow, despite the wrongness, he knows it to be hers. And still, he wants to live in the tambour of her words, curl between the pronunciation of her vowels. So, he opens his eye. He looks.

She is raw. Wild. Made rough by months spent beneath a tomb of rubble. Her face is pale, yet scratched through with red lines all about her cheeks and forehead. Her nose is dark around the bridge between the embers of her eyes and—

She steals his hand. Makes it touch her throat. She says, “I’m here.”

He repeats, “Here.”

And maybe it is not a trick. Maybe she really _is _here because the moonlight does not filter through her and he can feel the heat radiating off her skin and her hair is longer and her face is waned like the moon and her jutted cheekbone is blossoming purple and her lip is split and—

She brings his hand to her face so that he can cup her cheek. For a moment, he dreams of driving the flat of his palm through her temple to put an end to the phantom madness once and for all but, she _feels _so real. And what if she is?

“Are you real?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He strokes his thumb over her eyebrow, shivering at the tickle of the little hairs against his fingerprint. He isn’t sure of what to do, what to say, even though he has lived this before. Then, he had been hardly a man, hardly human. And somehow, it had been easier to stomach then, in that manic slush of being. But now, what is he if not purely, painfully human? And in love. And so, so relieved that he cries without intention or direction. Her jagged nails tug on his eyelashes when she swipes away the tears that manage to flow.

“What has happened to you?” he says, voice thick with mush.

“There will be time to talk later,” she says and she runs the cracked fingers of one hand over his lips and presses the rough fingers of the other to his heart, tapping them to the thrum she must feel beneath.

“Byleth—”

“Later,” she says. “I don’t… Please.”

Her voice is barren, even emptier than it had been when he first met her, practically nothing. He takes her by the shoulders, partly to comfort her, partly to ensure she won’t slip away, and asks, “Was… was it like before?”

She has never spoken of it, her time beneath the river, but, twice, she had awoken from slumber to ask him about the time and place, like she had found herself displaced.

“Later, please.”

Her hands slide along his chest, pressing hard against him. Through the cotton of his nightclothes, he can feel the sting of her nails. There is a shame in the arousal her ministrations elicit in him, but there is also an untethering.

“I need you,” she says and he says, “I thought I would never see you again.”

Her hands continue, harder than he remembers from the past. She does not look at him when she says, “I thought of you. Only you.”

And he kisses her, but only after he is certain that she will not wilt with the attention. From there, it is a sloppy exchange of kissing and touching until he no longer cares where she has been and what she has done, but wants only to be devoured, body and soul, by her, in any way she would have him. Because she is real. And here. And alive alive alive.

When she undresses him, it is with steady intent. When he undresses her, his anxiety gets the best of him and the simple leathers she wears rip apart in his hand. She does not laugh and it is his first indication that something is amiss. Always, she placates his anxiety and tells him not to worry. But not now. She only shimmies free of the rest of her leathers and launches them into the darkness. And then she is on him and he is one with her. And he listens for the short gasps and huffs that have directed him in the past, but hears none. She is silent and close-eyed above him. The sounds he makes are deep, keening, and embarrassing in the absence of even the slightest of her breaths, but he cannot stop himself. It is too much.

Afterward, in the haze that always comes after coupling with her, he cannot help but feel slightly used, especially once she disentangles from him and says, in monotone, “I could use a bath.”

And she could, she reeks of wilderness and battle in the same way he once had, but, in the past, she is usually so quick to wrap herself around him and breathe the air from his lungs. So, as she makes her way to the bathroom and leaves him alone, he sighs into the yawning dark above him, dual happiness and helplessness choking the energy from his muscles.

Head spinning, he listens to the muffled rush of water from the bathroom. It so reminiscent of the night after Gronder field that he finds himself longing for the past in a way he never though possible. How is it that it was easier then, amidst so much turmoil, than it is now?

Dimitri sighs again and rubs at his face, only to let loose a groan when his knuckles make contact with the thick tissue over his right eye. In the excitement, he had not even noticed the bareness of it. He reaches for the nightstand, floundering around its cluttered surface until his fingers lock around the eyepatch he had forsaken. He ties it back around his head with a blush, embarrassed that she has been exposed to the depravity of the scar in their shared intimacy. How horrid he must have looked, chuffing like a beast with his old, ghastly wound on full display.

As the seconds swell longer and the water stops running, he begins to fear a new height to his delusions. Surely, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he has imagined the entire encounter. No proof remains of her presence, only his own, uncertain memories. Until his name echoes from the vast porcelain landscape of the bathroom. He is hesitant in opening the door, half-convinced that there will be no one to greet him on the other side.

When he sees the tub full and occupied, his shoulders drop from his ears. Though he can hardly see her under the plethora of bubbles that cover the water’s surface and spill over onto the floor, he knows Byleth is there, from the single leg that juts out from the bubbly mess. He closes the door behind her and watches her shift, whorls of steam curling from the tub until only her head floats above the water. Part of him stirs at the thought of joining her beneath the bubbling waters, but another, calmer part keeps him from diving into the tub.

She does not look at him, only stares straight ahead. Water sloughs off her right arm as she lifts it from the tub. There is an angry flare of fresh bruise over the junction of her arm and shoulder. He hadn’t been able to see it in the dark and now, he can only wonder if he’d exacerbated the injury when she says, “I can’t wash my hair.”

Dimitri nods, but, realizing she is not looking, says, “I can do it.”

She only hums, low in her throat, before settling against the lip of the tub. He moves to her side, kneeling beside her in the damp of bubbles that coat the floor. Still, she does not look at him, though he can look only to her as he lathers his hands with shampoo. In the soft light cast by the bathroom’s magelights, he can see the trauma on her face, wrought dark and heavy in the bags under her eyes and the lines etched into her face.

With hands steadier than he feels, he kneads soap into her hair until it is streaked with froth. He draws his fingers through her hair, careful of each knot he encounters. She keeps her eyes closed through his ministrations and he fears she will begin to fade into mist between his fingers. But she doesn’t, only gasps when his nail catches a particularly troublesome knot and makes no other noise.

When he finishes, she slips beneath the water and stays submerged so long that the ripples still around her. He dips his hands into the water, shaking them to clean them of the soap. Without thought, he searches from her beneath the surface, retreating when his pinky makes gentle contact with the bump of her nose. And he waits for her to surface, sitting back over his feet and watching for the swish of water to herald her rising. It takes another moment, a few more heartbeats, before, finally, she breaches. Then, she stands. A current of bathwater runs from her hair, between her shoulder blades, and off the set of her hip, curling around scars he does not recognize like the tide curls around islands. He had not noticed them when she lay with him before, but he should have. Something wrong, something awful has happened to her.

“Byleth, what has been done to you?”

She gives no answer, only reaches over him for a towel he is too numb to provide. He watches in dumb silence as she dries, the woolen fibers growing damp with each sweep over her body. It is when she brings the towel to her hair and leaves her body bare that he catches sight of the raised whorl just above her hip. A brand of sorts, a curling symbol that he does not recognize. The skin around it is enflamed and stiff when she shifts her weight.

He wants to ask after it, but knows better. She has been flighty and cagey. Whatever has happened, she is not eager to share. So, he will wait for her to ease and he asks instead, “Does anyone else know you are alright?”

“No,” she says as she steps free of the tub. She wraps the towel around her chest so that it drapes over her nudeness. He stands, moving to her side when she walks from him into the bedroom, and says, “Then I must tell—”

She whirls on him, impressing a hand to the center of his chest. Her eyes scald. Her mouth is a tight, white line.

“No. You must not.”

He takes her hand in his, rubs at the bruised knuckles, but she rips it from his grasp, saying, “There are ears everywhere.”

Without a response, he watches her make her way through the room to his wardrobe, watches her yank it open, watches her rifle through the contents until finding something to her liking, watches her begin to dress in a shirt, of a kind and make he cannot determine in the dark. He says, “You cannot stay here forever.”

She stills, the shirt hanging off her like a shed skin. He cannot see the intricacies of her face, but he can sense her displeasure as easily as he could sense a plume of cold wind. 

“You would kick me out?”

Instinct drives him to move to her, drives him to placate, “No, never, but—"

She crosses her arms and stares him down, stopping the words before he can voice them, when he stands before her. Up close, he can see the exhaustion beneath her annoyance. He opens his arms to her and she steps within them without dropping her grip around herself.

“If someone has hurt you—”

“Dimitri, please.”

For a moment, there is a softness to her voice that lingers in the darkness around them. Her breath is hot against his bare chest. Her arms quiver. He touches a hand to her hair, bringing it through the wet locks in slow, simple strokes.

“If it were me,” he says, “if it had been me that went missing for months without a word and came back battered and bruised, you would not let it rest until you had answers.”

Silence follows his words, but she does not pull away. He continues stroking her hair until, at last, she asks, quietly, “Can we at least lie down?”

He nods, freeing her from his embrace and moving to the bed. He lifts the covers for her, lets her slide into the bed first. She settles on her side, curled in on herself, and he scoots in beside her, taking her into his arms so that her head rests on his chest and her hand lies against his face. She shifts until she doesn’t and then says, “Ask your questions.”

Dimitri thinks before speaking, considering what information is most important and what questions will engage her cooperation. So, he begins by asking, “Where have you been?”

When her fingers stiffen against his jaw, he knows he has already made a misstep.

“I do not know,” she says with a sour voice.

Then, she concedes.

“Underground.”

He rubs at her back, repeats, “Underground?”

She nods and her chin jabs into his chest, but he does not draw her attention to the blunder. He asks, “In Fhirdiad?”

“I found my way here.”

He doesn’t bother to pursue her journey here; he knows firsthand her survival capabilities and will ask of it another time. There were more pressing matters at hand.

“Who took you?”

She answers his questions with a question. Her voice is low, nearly a whisper.

“Do you remember Solon? Kronya?”

How could he forget when Kronya had killed Jeralt and Solon had cast Byleth into the depths of Goddess knows where?

“You killed them,” he says.

Her voice is low when she responds, barely a whisper.

“Not them. Others like them.”

The notion is terrifying, but one he has long suspected. Edelgard had aligned herself with many powerful, terrible parties and not all of them had been brought to justice alongside her. The associates of Solon and Kronya were just one group of many that his administration had been attempting to track down.

“How could they level Arianrhod?”

“They did not tell me.”

There is a touch of sarcastic humor within her bitterness, but he makes no attempt to coax out the levity. Instead, he stokes along the jagged ridge of her spine and asks, “What did they want from you?”

“They failed to mention that as well.”

This time, there is no humor as her body goes stiff. He works at her tension until she relaxes.

“I do not mean to be so cross. It is just…”

He kisses the top of her head, holds her a little closer. He knows he does not truly grasp the severity of all she has revealed, but he knows enough to alleviate his immediate concerns, beyond what had been done to her.

“It is alright. Rest now. We will speak of it more in the morning. I am just thankful you are—”

_Alive_ seems too crass a thing to say.

“—here."

“I love you,” he finishes. It is not his first time saying it, but this time feels different somehow, more important, like it proved the depth of his bond to her.

“I love you too,” she says. “So much.”

And, though her voice is monotone, he believes her. He takes her hand in his, presses the back of it to his mouth, and then lays their intertwined fingers in the small space between them.

Later, probably when she thinks him asleep, she presses a long, hard kiss against his forehead, squeezing him tight to her like a child would a bear stuffy. And he does not open his eye, only continues his deep slow breathing until it is no longer an act.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. I have returned. After a month of literally everything that possibly could go wrong going wrong, it was nice to take the past day to brush back with this story and polish up this chapter. There's, uh, a lot going on here (though I feel like i say that every chapter lmao), but hopefully you all will enjoy. I'm a little fired so I can't think of much else to say but I hope you all know how much I appreciate you all and enjoy sharing this work with you!! As always, feel free to reach out and lemme know what you think! :)


	15. Warm Embraces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An experience in domesticity.

Dimitri has never been a good liar. Once, in his youth, he had attempted to conceal the true nature of how an antique vase had been broken from his father, but had only managed three words before bursting into sad, pitiful sobs.

Of course, he has gotten better at lying, but not by any significant margin. Though, it does not help that even he can see his behavior for the past two weeks since Byleth’s return has been immensely different from his norm of sulk and gloom. Still, he does his best to conjure believable fibs for the extra meals he takes to his room, the herbs he is caught gathering from the apothecary, the moratorium he has placed on any and all visitors to his chambers, and the extra load of clothes he sends to be washed.

But regardless, no matter the lies he weaves, his closest friends know he entertains a woman, or women depending on the source, in his bed chambers. This, he gathers from the conversations Sylvain whispers too loudly and the sour stares he receives from Ingrid and Annette. From Dedue, he gathers more, that his closest friend knows exactly the sort of secret he keeps. But Dedue does not ask after the company he keeps even though his astute eyes suggest he knows the full truth of the thing. He and Dedue do not speak of such things, having formed some unspoken truce when his tryst with Byleth first began. 

Thankfully, the domestic bliss Byleth’s constant presence brings helps to smooth the sting of lying to those closest to him. Each morning, he awakens to the tickle of her breath between his shoulder blades. Each night, he falls asleep to the weight of her arms around his chest. When he wakes to nightmares, she is there to soothe him. Though, she speaks less now. Less than ever before. 

She does not speak of the things that she endured in whole, but he has begun to put the pieces together. She spent a month tethered underground before spending a month on the run, making her way to Fhirdiad. While captured, she was drained of her blood. She was branded. She was the victim of dark magic. She was the spectator of twisted experimentation. She was nearly broken.

But she survived to make her way to him.

When he is at court, she stays in his bedchambers. When he returns, she often sits amongst a trove of books and records with intelligible notes written on parchment before her. She says she is searching for answers, but he does not know what questions they might answer. He suspects she does not either. She finds little.

Regardless, she claims she will be ready to reenter into the world at large soon, but not a moment sooner. The indefinite timeline makes his spine itch. He loves her, fully and desperately, and would never cast her out, but he cannot harbor her forever, no matter how he may wish otherwise. 

That morning, Byleth is particularly unwilling to permit him leave, drawing him back into bed and keeping him behind schedule until she has her fill of him. When she finally allows him to take his leave, he says, “Will you be needing more bishop’s lace?”

A child by her is not an altogether unpleasant notion. She would be an excellent mother and he, well, he would try his best at being a good father, like his father once was. But he wants no children, certainly not now, if ever. The chance of his condition proving hereditary is too great a risk to leave to chance, and there is no ignoring that the birth of a royal bastard would threaten the already thinned reigns of his authority.

Byleth shakes her head, presses her mouth to the side of his thumb, and says nothing.

“I will look forward to your return,” she says, but her voice is solemn and then she lays back down and wiggles further beneath the covers. A frown threatens the serenity of his face, but he does not allow it to emerge. He cannot fault her for seeking more sleep, but she has been spending a great deal of time in bed recently. Often, he returns to find her in the same position he left her in and, even though he can see the evidence of her day around him, he is always fearful that this dark thing within him has learned to feed off Byleth as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: I've cut the later half of this chapter but it simply didn't fit and really bothered me, but I like it much better now lol  
I have returned!! *throws fluff at you that I wasn't going to write but then I did & I'm like 99% confident absolutely NO ONE was expecting lol*  
I made a playlist for this fic to listen to while writing and I just... I lose it every time Exit Music (For a Film) by Radiohead comes on because it just makes me feral for dimileth. Like I had to take several breaks writing this chapter (even though it's not NEARLY as angsty as literally everything else) just to recuperate LMAO. It's been a time y'all. Life is hard lol.  
AlSo, I might be posting an AU (for reals this time!!!) here soon. In its barest form, it's a modern AU with swords and lances because I wanted Sothis to be a pop culture gremlin LOL. But seriously, if you like this, you might like that because it'll be similar themes just modern and Byleth-centric so keep an eye out lol!  
I am going to start updating more regularly I SWEAR. After this pain of a chapter (the fluff is NOT my forte y'all & I spent literal days debating whether I was going to have Annette go into labor LMFAO), I'll be delving into more themes/plot lines I'm more interested in so hopefully I'll be able to churn out some quality stuff!  
As always, let me know what you think and I hope you enjoy!!! <3


	16. Unexpected Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A letter brings revelations and arguments.

It is not quite winter, but a squall has blown into Fhirdiad from the west, burying the capital beneath a solid sheet of ice and snow. Given the unexpected weather, all of Dimitri’s official business outside the capital has been brought to a sudden halt, but rather than enjoy his first reprieve from his duties since he took the throne, he stands outside at the whims of nature. 

Among the raging wind and ice, Dimitri is angry, angrier than he has been in a long time. The ceaseless hot churning of blood through his clenched fists gives rise to flashings of memory from his days on the heath and nights in the slums. All the bloody business he had wrought always hovers on the edge of his thoughts, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike, and now is an opportune time. He grips his forearms, grits his teeth so hard together they risk cracking. But the cold helps to clear out the painful humors of the past, blustering through his hair with icy aggression.

It has been a simple day. He had taken breakfast in his quarters, sharing the extra helpings he had requested with Byleth, who ate voraciously and assured him the muffins were “Goddess-tier,” and then he had left to meet with his council and discuss how to remain active given the storm with plans to return for an evening of lounging about his quarters and listening to her read from ancient texts until she tired of yellowing pages and took an interest in him instead. He had even arranged to have dinner brought to his quarters for her to enjoy. It had seemed the perfect evening. But then the Lord of the Underground had come to call. Somehow. 

In another week’s time, Byleth would have been there for a month and they had come to an agreement that she would reveal her presence at the end of the moon. And a plan had been crafted. Lies had been concocted. Everything had seemed like it would be alright.

But then Dimitri had walked into his quarters only to find Byleth standing in the middle of the room, a hand splayed over her mouth and a sheath of paper dangling from the other. And for too long she had only stared at him as he demanded to know what had happened, as he worked himself into a panic. Eventually, he coaxed the letter from her fingers, only stomaching the first few words of slippery prose to know who had penned it. If Dimitri had to pick who Byleth had been secretly maintaining correspondence with, the Lord of the Underground would have been his last choice. 

There was a time when he had respected Yuri, even considered him a friend, but that was long before he had spent the entire war hunkered underground, refusing to offer aid, poking fun at the notion that it was the surface dwellers who needed help for once, attesting that the people of Abyss had suffered long enough to be dragged into a pointless war. 

But Byleth liked Yuri and spoke highly of him and his ilk, even when they failed to assist with the war or emerge from the underground or respect her authority or attend her coronation. And apparently trusted them more than she trusted Dimitri and the resources he had offered to help her investigate. She had turned them all down, fearing conspiracy, but _ Yuri _she had trusted. 

Truthfully though, Dimitri had been proud of the way he had kept his head, how he had calmly listened to Byleth tell of how she had been writing to Yuri, asking for the use of his spy network, and of how the news he had uncovered was so striking that she had been unable to do anything except stand in shock. 

_ “He’s found them,” _ she had said. _ “The ones who attacked Arianrhod.” _

She had not stopped talking, rambling through explanations in a voice wavering free of its usual monotone. And he had been fine through the revelation that the ones who attacked Arianrhod were likely the same who’d committed the Tragedy of Duscur, because hadn’t he always suspected such a thing, and he had been fine through the realization that she had been keeping her full knowledge from him, and truly, Dimitri had been fine through the entire thing, embracing all she revealed because at least she was finally telling him _ something _and he would be lying to say that the thrill of closing in on the dastards spiked his thoughts. So, he had been fine. Better than fine. 

Until Byleth revealed that she would leave in the morning, storm-be-damned, to meet with Yuri on the outskirts of Fhirdiad and return with him to Abyss, until he admitted he could not leave so soon but could make preparations within the week and she had said, _ “Is it not time you put your kingdom first?” _ or she had said, _ “Stop chasing ghosts,” _ or, _ “You’ve worked too hard to falter now,” _ or _ “I can’t see you like that again.” _

He couldn’t remember now what her exact words were that had broken him and sent him out into the freezing wind, only that they had struck the heart of him and ignited that long lingering flame of vengeful rage. 

When the balcony door creaks open behind him, he uncurls his arms from over his chest and reaches forward to grip the banister, spiderweb fractures inching through the stone immediately from his touch. She does not approach but hovers behind him. Her presence is as fleeting and uncertain as a bird’s. 

“Dimitri, please,” Byleth says. Her voice is level. Her words seem rehearsed. “I know you do not agree. I know I have upset you. Disappointed you even, but please. Come inside.”

He gives no response and she sighs. He imagines her breath forming a bubble of warmth around her head, keeping her still and preserved in the cold air like the distant portraits of the long-dead saints.

“Please, this will be our last time together for—”

Dimitri laughs, harsh and hard, the cold jetting into his lungs and throat, cutting up the tender flesh to shreds. 

“Dimitri.”

The entire scene is so familiar it hurts. Him, angry, inconsolable, unreceptive. Her, pleading, gentle, dedicated. All he would need to do is go without bathing for a few days and spout some heated words about the wills of the dead and—

Goddess, he was pathetic, wasn’t he?

He rubs at his face and it hurts, the leather against the raw skin, but it helps keep his self-destructive thoughts at bay. When there is pain, there is little else to consider. But even then, it feels largely performative to be guilty. He has a right to be upset. Doesn’t he? 

For a moment, he mulls over what he wants to say, letting the words form and melt in his mouth over and over until the strength finds him. And still, he does not look at her. 

“You should have told me,” he says. “Did I not deserve at least that? At least the truth?” 

He imagines her frowning, but knows the truth is that she bears no expression, only a blank slate of facial features. 

“And what would that have done? I did not know where they were. What they wanted.”

“You do now.”

Her face sours. 

“Dimitri—”

Already, he knows this conversation will become an argument that leaves both of them unsatisfied. Though he is furious, at her, at the circumstances, at everything, he knows well his own viciousness and he is done unleashing it upon her. 

“Enough. You have made your point.”

She walks up beside him, standing just beyond the point of his elbow so that their arms do not risk touching. He can only feel the illusion of her warmth. 

She wears little: a pair of ratty lounging pants from his youth and a training shirt of his that she has knotted just at her bellybutton. She stands very still and stoic, but, already, even from the corner of his eye, he sees her skin souring in the cold. She is unused to the cold, has complained about it judiciously since her arrival, despite staying within the confines of his room. 

“Go inside,” he says. 

She doesn’t respond, only juts her chin and stares ahead, over the snow-capped mountains ahead. Flakes dust her face, catching on her eyelashes and staining them pale and crystalline. 

He is no stranger to stubbornness, but he suspects she would tempt death to see him move. Most of the time, her resoluteness is a major boon, but not now, not when it is used against him. 

“Talk to me,” she says. “We are past angry silences.” 

And she is right. He knows she is. So he manages to spit out, “You think me unstable.”

She is silent, most likely thinking of the least hurtful words. She has always been meticulous in her words, often slow to respond to even the simplest questions. Once, she had told him she still found it difficult to make conversation when her instincts always lead her to sharp, short answers. 

“You cannot abandon your people. Not again.”

He does not mean to crack the banister, but he does. When he uncurls his fingers from the stone, pieces of it come loose and tumble into the growing snowdrifts below. 

“You are not the only one who has suffered,” she says, but her voice is softer. It is the kind of tone one takes with a spooked beast. So, like a spooked beast, he curls his lip and snarls, “I am the only one who’s entire family was slaughtered!”

“But you are not the only one who has lost the ones they love!” 

Dimitri balks. Her voice is shrill and her eyes bright. He has never seen her like this. Her anguish is usually mumbled and monotone, but this something else entirely. It is sobering. The fight flees from him. 

How might things have turned out if she had approached him this way when she had found him in the Goddess Tower? Would he have listened? He doesn’t know, but he listens now. 

“My father. Seteth. Both killed by the same cretins that took your family. And you think that doesn’t matter. That your grief outweighs mine.” 

He wants to defend himself, but she is not entirely wrong. He _ has _lost more, but he has never thought the things she claims. He has not even known her to be grieving, at least not in any significant way. 

Byleth continues, incensed. Her angry words form a cloud of steam about their heads. 

“These people have taken everything from me. From you. From Rhea. From Fodlan. Even Edelgard—”

“What of Edelgard?”

The question comes through his teeth, choked and harsh. He _ was _ willing to listen and to allow her to vent, Goddess knows she has done the same for him too many times to count, but his patience vanishes at the mention of Edelgard. 

“Then you do not know,” she says and her scrunched mouth is nearly haughty, nearly vindictive. 

“What of Edelgard?” he repeats. His voice teeters on a growl. 

The flame has vanished from Byleth’s face and her voice has returned to its usual monotone. He feels as though he is her student once more from the way she stares at him with level, almost disinterested, calm. 

“She was captured, experimented upon, tortured as I was, but for years. The things she did, they were warped by her torment, inspired by her trauma.”

The words will not come to voice his disbelief. But he knows, even in this strange anger that has embroiled them both, that Byleth would not twist the truth on the matter. 

“She had two crests. And her hair, completely colorless. The same as Lysithea.” 

He remains quiet for a moment, stewing in consideration. He knew something had happened to Edelgard to change her appearance and inspire such venom, but why had she worked alongside the same vermin that had tormented her? If there was even the slightest possibility that she truly had nothing to do with Duscur—

But, no. The thought makes him sick. Edelgard _ was _involved with Duscur. Any other belief stands to completely reorient his entire being. Even if he has vowed to forgive her. 

“What else have you kept from me?” 

Dimitri cannot look at her after he has asked, staring instead into the coming wind. It is a question that has long sat heavy in his chest since the night in that cabin in the woods when he had listened for her pulse but found none, since she had stepped back into his life after five years with the same face and frame that she had left with, since she had cleaved open the sky and stepped free with a new sadness in her eyes. Truly, since that first day he had met her when she had killed the bandits pursuing him without pause, he had held the question of her being within him, dwelling in it when he had no choice and ignoring it when he had the chance. 

When she speaks, her voice is low, nearly a warning, but without the pretense of a threat. 

“Dimitri—”

He speaks over her, steamrolling whatever excuse she might voice. 

“There must be more, yes? More that you have deemed me unable to withstand?”

He chances a glance and her mouth is drawn in a scowl. There is a glint of something in her eyes, but it vanishes when she catches his gaze. 

“That isn’t fair.”

Anger burbles through the unease. He snaps, “Isn’t it? Is that not what you have done?”

She hangs her head the way a child might during a scolding and his mouth fills with acid regret. So, he softens, reaches for the stiff, freezing length of her fingers. Squeezes and asks, “What else is there, Byleth?” 

_ What more is there to you? _He wants to ask because there is so much about her that simply cannot be, but is. The way she knows things will happen before they do, the way she fights with a power greater than she can possibly possess, the way she wields her emotions and expressions like weapons, the way she can look at him and craft a semblance of love for the bloody beast he is. 

“There’s nothing. Nothing more.”

A lie. And now he knows it is not her first. But he is exhausted. And he loves her. So, he does not push for an answer, does not fight when she finally takes his hand and drags him inside from the cold, does not continue their argument though he feels it curling round and round in his belly as she slots herself into his arms, shivering and nuzzling against him. 

“I love you,” she says. “But I have to leave. I have to make this right.” 

_ And you would only make it worse, _goes unspoken, but he hears it all the same. It is not true. He is better now. He would not slip back into that shadow of hate and slaughter for the sake of revenge. He would take the heads of the dastards poisoning Fodlan not for the ghosts of his past, but for him, for her. 

But when he broaches the subject once more, after they have settled into a tenuous peace and lay wrapped around one another, Byleth says, “I know how much this means to you but Fodlan needs you.”

She is right. It is simply irresponsible to even entertain the notion that he, the sovereign of a rebuilding continent, can pursue such aims. Still, there is a fault in her logic. 

“Fodlan needs you too. The church is in chaos.”

Byleth shuffles from his arms to sling herself around him, burrowing her face into his neck. Her hair, still stiff from the cold, tickles his exposed skin. Her voice resonates through his throat when she speaks. 

“And it will continue to be in chaos until the dastards lie dead. They infiltrated the church during our time at the Academy. They could easily do it again.” 

He runs the tips of his fingers along her back, keeping his touch soft and fleeting in the way she likes. It is picturesque, this position they have taken, but it feels an act on both their parts. He stares at the ceiling. He asks, "Then you will abandon the church?”

She lifts her head and her hair spills over his face until she sweeps it away. She frowns and he ceases stroking her back, stilling his hands against the dip of her spine. 

“You have such poor faith in me,” she says. “There are sanctions in place to protect the church and, when this is all over, I will return.” 

He hums and resumes in his small caressing, ghosting his fingers up over the jut of her shoulder blades and smoothing them over her arms. She nestles back against his neck and says, “I do not expect it will take long. They are powerful, but they are few.” 

And then she tells of her plans to rally the Knights of Seiros on a mission of execution and extermination and Dimitri does his best not to shiver at the tambor of her tone, so similar to the one he had once adopted in the not-so-distant past. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, just this chapter was COMPLETELY different and just felt wrong and I could not make it work. BUT THEN I played Cindered Shadows and went OMFG I'VE FIGURED IT OUT. So *sighs and adds Ashen Wolves and Cindered Shadows spoilers to tags*  
TBH, I'm not even going to delve into their individual stories or anything much beyond including them as characters because I LOVE THEM and their existence actually allieviates a lot of conceptual problems I've been having with this story (i.e. how to work in Claude gallavanting around Fodlan with Byleth hunting TWSITD when he's got a whole ass country to run and that's Byleth's ENTIRE reasoning for leaving Dimitri out of it lol) so yay!  
Also, Balthus. What a man. I love him.  
Hopefully, and I say that with A LOT of hope, this story will start rolling again because we've gotten through the parts that I knew needed to be included but I really did not feel jazzed about writing whatsoever. Now that I say that, I hope it doesn't come through in the prose oof. TBH, when this is all said and done, I'm probably going to come back to these last few chapters and reevaulate them because they really get my goat for some reason lol.  
Also, you may have noticed chapter length got upped to 25. That's been in the works for a long time but I just never got around to updating it. I have a definitive plot for this, just gotta bang it out :o  
I've also gone through and removed all the indents because I didn't realize how ugly it made this look on mobile until literally today lol. So, my bad on that one. At some point, I'll go back to previous chapters and fix it there as well  
I hope y'all enjoy and as always, lemme know what you're thinking! :p <3


	17. Blessed Coincidence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fate leads to an unplanned meeting.

It is a cold night for late spring, but Dimitri is unbothered by the chill. It is not until the flesh on his lips cracks and blood wells in the cold that he pulls up his hood, fastens it around his face, and falls still once more. It has been a fitful day punctuated by a long ride from Fhirdiad to the outskirts of former Leicester territory, nearly another day’s ride from Garreg Mach, and the unyielding screechings of Annette and Ashe’s child. The babe, a boy with a stock of red-hair and lungs far more mature than his few moons, is a fussy, squalling thing and more ill-tempered than either of his parents. Even though he proves the Royal Party’s entire impetus for the journey to the monastery, he has drawn the ire of all his companions more strongly than even Dimitri had managed in the deepest throes of his revenge. Thankfully, the babe has fallen quiet with the descent of night, snuggled in his mother’s weary arms as his father keeps a tentative watch over them both. 

The others have all filtered off to bed after Dedue announced he would take first watch alongside the King’s Guard, so, in the center of their makeshift camp, Dimitri sits alone and unimpeded. He has attempted to sleep, but the ground is too hard and his thoughts too unsettled. 

Three months have passed without a word. He does not know if Byleth is alive or dead. It troubles him how familiar the feeling has become, especially in rare moments when he has nothing to do but think of her. Still, even when his time is glutted with work and business, he thinks of her, fears for her. It does not help that he has woken several mornings to realize he has forgotten to take his medicine the night before, despite Dedue’s constant, firm reminders. 

His failure to consistently medicate has not yet produced any significant issues beyond Dedue’s disapproving stare and a letter of reproach from Mercedes. Truly though, if he has yet to lapse into delusions and hallucinations, is there any harm in refraining from such a strict medication schedule? Part of him knows there is a danger. Part of him doesn’t care. 

Despite the venison that Dedue had prepared after a well-placed shot from one of the King’s Guard, Dimitri’s stomach rumbles. It is a mild hunger, but it resonates through his body. Around him, the slumbering of his friends and peers stills as if they too have been plagued by a similar, phantom hunger. For too long, there is only the occasional crack of the conjured fire, the sound of night air rustling bushes, and the whispering of running water somewhere deep in the trees. Dimitri stares into the flames until his eye aches. Around him, the ambiance intensifies, pulsating from the deep woods. Every shuffle from those keeping watch melds with every snuffle of passing wildlife and the low breaths of the sleepers folds into the unending rustling of the wind. Even when Sylvain’s snoring erupts with newfound vigor, it joins the cacophony of mounting mania bearing down on Dimitri. 

But even as the weight of the surging noises drives him to thoughts of burying himself beneath the loamy earth, he sits still and straight-backed. He watches the flickering flames, tracing the bits of ash that leap from each crackle in their descent to the embers, and refuses to meet whatever monstrosity looms just ahead. Still, he cannot keep the images of his shadow, stretched long and lean behind him, falling prey to the frothing maw of whatever beast his mind has thought fit to conjure. 

He practices his breathing the way Mercedes has shown him. Grips his thighs to keep the darkness at bay so hard his fingers tinge white. Tries to think good thoughts. 

He thinks of Castle Fhirdiad in winter with the eaves all slicked with ice and every window warm with the glow of candlelight and murmured love. He thinks of the soft weight of his childhood dog over his feet, keeping him safe and secure through the long Fhirdiad night. He thinks of Sylvain, hunched over and squawking, a hole ripped clean through his breeches while Felix laughs so hard he cries and snorts. He thinks of the crow he freed from a wicked snare that later brought him a button as thanks. He thinks of the swirl of his stepmother’s spoon against the rim of her teacup during a calm breakfast. He thinks of Dorothea’s honey-coated melodies lulling him to sleep when the weather proved warm enough for late nights in the courtyard and open windows. He thinks of Dedue emerging from the smoke and gore of Myrrdin, an ax across his back and a resolute bend to his mouth. 

He thinks of Byleth like a hole in his head. 

In the edges of the firelight, shadows writhe and wriggle. His mind makes shapes of them, turns them into beasts and men, even when he closes his eye. He counts backward from ten and breathes in through his mouth, out through his nose. When he reaches zero, he opens his eye to find that the shapes have migrated from the fire, drifting deeper into the trees, disappearing from sight, and beckoning him to follow with a gentle hum of wind. And he knows better. Knows that he should stay put and not drift further into this rising mania. But he rises and he follows. 

The wind is constant on his back, guiding him to the banks of a burbling creek. From the spittle of rushing water and the fallen leaves along its curves, the forest shapes into the nebulous past. He watches as the leaves unfold and construct beings of dirt and thorn and death. He watches them fight, fall, embrace, and die and die and die. The last figure rushes towards him, a specter of wild hair and mangled face. Before it reaches him, it is fissured by a shriek of wind and then is gone. The gust blows past his face, ripping his hood free. The impossible fingers of the wind-thing slip past his nose and shoot through his hair. He stands for a moment longer, staring at the newly polluted water and then memory roars through his mind like fire in a gas-soaked hall. 

Beneath the faint light of the moon, waning behind swells of dark clouds, he had stumbled through a creek similar to this one and soaked his feet with the fresh, cold water, had wandered aimlessly through the night-dark forest, had carried Byleth’s prone body as her lifeblood warmed his arms, had emerged from the dust of her past to ensure her future. 

It is a fool’s notion that spurs him forward, but he follows the winding creek with hope overwhelming his rationality. The trees glisten with waxen moonlight, shifting on the same breeze that pushes him onward. Leaves on heavy boughs hang over the creek, forming a cavern of wilderness over his head. With his feet moving without the direction of his head, he walks into several branches, catching sticks and bits of greenery in his hair. 

And then a hand clamps tight onto his shoulder.

His body becomes a spear of coiled aggression as he draws the sword from his belt and bucks back against the sudden intrusion. His attacker goes down without a fight, falling into the creek with enough force to drench his legs with their splash. When he whirls with the intent of a killing blow, he recoils, stepping back and nearly tumbling down into the creek himself.

With a glower that cuts through the night, Ingrid sweeps a hand over her forehead, slapping her water-logged hair back from her face. Even in the low-light, Dimitri sees the edges of her leathers growing heavier with the swell of water as he sheathes his sword. The blush that colors his face prickles. He offers a hand, but she stands without a glance at it. If he were unfamiliar with Ingrid, he might have been offended, but, even still, it stings. 

“Your majesty,” she says, ever demure, ever respectful. Even as the shine of her eyes threatens violence and the twist of her mouth suggests fury.

“You startled me,” he says. 

“I apologize,” she says and her voice is stiff like in the moments between one of Sylvain’s crude jokes and the smack of her palm against his arm. She wrings out her hair and it hits the underbrush with a pitter-patter like a sudden rain.

“How long have you followed me?”

“Since you charged off into the woods,” she says and she takes to braiding her hair. It is so wet that the strands hold together without a tie. 

He does his best to keep his face even as the muscles around his ribs twinge. Chasing after ephemeral visions in the woods while in full view does not bode well for his recovery. 

“Are you alright?” she asks, but it seems less a question than an accusation. Her braid, a nub compared to the full length she’d boasted during their Academy days, hangs loose and limp over her shoulder, draining itself of pond scum. Cowing from her heavy stare, he says, “I was struck by a sudden familiarity. We marched through these woods once.”

“Yes, many times during the war.”

A sudden breeze accompanies her words, adding a gritted tension to her voice. If it is cold for him, it must be freezing for her, half-soaked as she is. 

“I… you will think me mad.”

He imagines the poorly-veiled concern of Dedue or the suffocating sweetness of Mercedes, but Ingrid offers the glint of a smile, dark humor splitting her face. 

“Only if you say something truly mad.”

What constitutes something truly mad? A pledge to the dead? A hope for revenge? Is that what she expects? Something truly mad? 

But he is thinking too much and Ingrid’s smile is slipping. 

“Do you remember the march to Ailell? What happened on the way there?”

“Of course.”

She does not say, _ How could I forget? _but he hears it all the same. He suspects none have forgotten the night the only hope of winning the war was nearly lost again. Because of him. 

“I spent that night in a cabin Jeralt built.”

Ingrid tilts her head and her eyes follow the curvature of the stream past his form. There is only untamed wild ahead with no hint of civilization. Understandably, her voice is tinged with disbelief when she asks, “Near here?”

Dimitri only nods. 

“Lead the way then,” she says with a wave of her arm. 

But he doesn’t move. How can he? If he is mistaken and there is nothing to prove his suspicions, she will think him returned to a state of madness. And though he knows she will not tell a soul beyond his inner circle, Ingrid’s doting is nearly as oppressive as Mercedes’, except severely lacking in the spoonful of sugar approach. If they wander to no avail and when, if Dedue has not already warned everyone, she learns he has not been adhering to a strict schedule of medication, she will force-feed him his medicine until he chokes on it. 

“Ingrid—”

“If we don’t go, you will regret it.”

She’s right, of course. She’s rarely wrong and even if she was, she wouldn’t believe. It’s part of what makes being her friend so infuriating. It helps though that Dedue is so forgiving. 

“You’re half-drowned,” he says. 

“And I’d rather be half-drowned than abandon my liege.” 

There is no arguing with her. He knows she will hog-tie him and drag him along the creek if he tries to walk away from this. So, he gives her a hard nod and turns to trace beside the winding path of the creek. She follows close behind without a word and her presence makes him ever aware of the sound of his footsteps and the shape of his spine. She is his oldest friend but expects much of him. Maybe more than anyone else.

It is her expectations that add extra weight to his shoulders. Still, he has not revealed the truth of Byleth’s condition or her stay with him. Cowardly as it may be, he fears the reproach of those he calls friends, fears Ingrid’s belittling stare most of all. It has only been a few moons that he has truly enjoyed the full joys of their friendship again. He is not eager to lose it. And if Byleth waits for him in the little cabin in the woods where she once anointed the floor with her lifeblood, then he may not have a choice but to lose the trust of his friends once more. 

As he considers what to say, how to explain himself if the truth unravels, the canopy of oak and sugar-maple thins to allow the light of the stars before receding altogether. And then there is only the creek and, a little further off, the cabin.

It is almost exactly as he remembers it, though the door stands stark and new against the splintering wood around it and the dusty windows flicker with the friendly light of a fire. All concerns of severed trust and broken friendship subsides to the steady beat of his heart and the heft of Byleth’s name in his mouth. 

His long legs make long strides to the door and his long fingers pull long and hard at the door. It flies open, thundering against the wall, but it doesn’t explode into splinters like it really should. Behind him, the dew-stricken grass crunches from Ingrid’s pursuit. A specter of the past fills her form in his mind and it is not tall, corn-silk Ingrid that chases after him, but beautiful, vibrant Byleth with wet, doe-eyes reaching for the too-broad shoulder of his youth, aiming to pull him away from the eternality of heedless revenge. 

But it is Ingrid following. Not Byleth. And the cabin is empty. Much cleaner and fuller than he remembers, but empty all the same. 

Rather than nurse his punctured hopes, he takes stock of the cabin. The furniture is still ragged and dark with age and use. The dolls that had once mocked him are gone as well. Few amenities have been added: a knife block on the table, a case of clothes with white sleeves and tulle skirts spilling out, a single skillet hanging over the fireplace, new sheets for the beds, a small planter by the window. He runs his hand over the back of the bed Byleth had occupied, now adorned with a fresh quilt, and tries to think of anything other than the stink of blood and the way she looked then so soft and needing, before he’d known that she truly looked the exact opposite when undone by his hand. 

“Someone’s coming.” 

All the blood rushes to Dimitri’s head and warms the wet at the back of his throat. For a moment, the rush is enough to see Byleth in the diminutive figure approaching with a gigantic fish in hand. Ringlets of green cascade over the fish’s shimmering scales and in a haze he imagines eyes ringed with exhaustion but sparking at the sight of him, her soft, plush lips drawing into a slow smile, her hands dropping the fish and reaching for him, embracing him, holding him tight so that her head pressed against the divot of his ribs and-- no. None of that. It’s not Byleth. 

With her neck craned around the massive fish, Flayn scootches up the pitiful steps leading up to the cabin’s door, toeing at each one before taking it. On a frayed one with a jagged lip, she nearly stumbles and the fish cants in her arms, threatening to slap against the worn wood. She rights herself before Dimitri can ever consider coming to her rescue. When she finally reaches the door and finds them standing behind it, she does not react with surprise or aggression. She merely smiles, large and lackadaisical, and says, “The Goddess must be smiling upon us to grant such a coincidence.” 

Flayn waltzes into the cabin without another word, humming an easy tune that sounds like the hymns Byleth once forced him to practice alongside the rest of his class. Ingrid raises a brow, shooting him an expression she surely expects him to match, but he glazes over her, focusing on Flayn and righting the sudden wash of emotion on his tongue. 

“Byleth,” he says. “Is Byleth here?”

With a sigh, Flayn plops the fish down onto the table, over the smattering of towels. She pulls a knife from the block, a heavy one with a thick blade. The knife flashes in the firelight and she cuts off the fish’s head. Blood and oil stream from the wound, spilling over the towels. It smells of the stagnant water and of dead things lurking among pondweed. Tossing the head into the trash, Flayn offers a small smile to him. 

“It is cold outside,” she says with a voice distant as the horizon. She slides her knife beneath the fish’s scales and removes its only natural defense in one fell swoop. When Flayn sets to further gutting and deboning it, Ingrid stalks to the fireplace, a breath away from Flayn. Her hand lies on the hilt of her sword. Her eyes never leave Flayn’s back. 

“Flayn.” 

She looks up from her work, eyes as thick as stained glass. 

“Have you heard from her?”

Dimitri does not respond. Ingrid frowns and though her gaze doesn’t stray from Flayn, he can feel it heavy on him all the same. Flayn is quick to fill the silence. 

“I know I am not supposed to, but I worry. Her and I… We did not part on the best terms,” Flayn says, dropping her attention back to her work. “And I know she trusts you. Deeply.”

She slices the fish open so that the meat of its chest lies in thick halves and hacks through the intestinal mass lying heavily in the center.

“You have spoken with her?”

Flayn nods. “I know I should not have, but I caught wind that she was in Abyss and well I had things I felt I needed to say to her. It was, oh, last moon.”

“Last moon?” he repeats. 

Ingrid’s eyes are couched in shadow. The fire saps the light from her face in dark contours. He looks at Flayn, not Ingrid, but she hovers so close and so present behind Flayn that she invades his periphery regardless. 

“Yes, I… When was last you spoke with her?”

He hesitates. He cannot gain information without giving some, he knows, but there must be a delicacy to this. Of course, delicacy has never been his specialty so he gives Flayn her answer without a hint of tact. 

“Three moons.”

Dimitri does not need to look at Ingrid to suffer her wrath. His face reddens in the wake of his revelation and his shoulders creep up to his ears, even as he fights to keep them level. 

“Then she has not... I see. I am not the only one then.”

“What?”

Flayn’s fingers pry at the dandelion-thin bones of the fish, plucking them from the clinging meat once they have come loose. 

“You’ve upset her as well, haven’t you?”

When he gives no answer, she says, “I told her she had no right to make my decisions for me. That she has no way of knowing what my… what Seteth would have wanted for me.” 

Dimitri understands all too well and he wonders how many times Byleth has drawn the same argument.

“But now I fear for her. More than I want to fight. And that may be wrong, maybe I should want to avenge him more,” Flayn says. “Her and Rhea are the only family I have left and with Rhea...”

Flayn falls silent and her hands fall still. Her head droops and her ringlets hang about her face like the boughs of a willow. From the curls, one of her ears crests, sharp as a shark’s fin. 

“The Blue Lions will always be there for you, Flayn.”

“Yes,” Flayn says, though her voice seems distant. “Thank you.” 

Somehow, Dimitri has made a misstep. Flayn moves to the fireplace, butchered fish leaking blood over her hand and between her fingers, and removes the skillet from its hook once Ingrid has scooted away. Free from her post, Ingrid comes to Dimitri’s side. She stares straight ahead with her chin held high and stubborn. 

Flayn pulls a bag of tea from her pocket and rips it open. 

“Byleth taught me this. It’s the only thing she ever got right about cooking,” Flayn says, sprinkling the contents of the shorn teabag over the sizzling fish. 

“Granted, I suppose I am not one to talk when my food makes most gag.” 

Ingrid’s stomach rumbles.

“It smells good,” she says. Dimitri nods. It _ does _smell good. And thank the Goddess it is enough to distract Ingrid. 

The sizzling skin of the fish is the only sound in the entire world for a long time. Flayn flips it once. Twice. Pokes at the meat of it and, seemingly satisfied, removes it from the heat. 

“Shall we eat?” 

Ingrid moves quickly, clearing the table with a swoop of her arm, but her face reddens immediately. Food has always been a weakness of hers, one that makes her especially prone to bouts of absurdity. 

“There are plates in the cupboard,” Flayn says, a wisp of good-natured humor in her voice. As Ingrid moves to retrieve the plates, Dimitri asks, “Do you live here?” 

“Heavens no,” Flayn says. 

Ingrid sets the table and Flayn coaxes the fish from the skillet. 

“Then the furniture—”

“Byleth’s doing. She stayed here from time to time when she found herself with a moment of reprieve.” 

Flayn quarters the chunks of fish with a fresh knife from the block and distributes a piece to each of them. Each piece steams with its own intensity, but Ingrid doesn’t falter. She scarfs down her fish, practically moaning words of praise around the tender flesh. Dimitri takes a bite of his piece, but it tastes only of ash. Around her portion, Flayn says, “I had hoped you would come. Hoped we would have the chance to speak on matters better left unsaid at Garreg Mach.” 

Dimitri chances another taste of his fish, but there is nothing besides the texture of rent flesh between his teeth. He gulps and asks, “Such as?”

“Byleth and Rhea, for that matter. The things they know. The things they plan to do.”

Then, Flayn sighs and adds, “There are those that want the three of us dead. I have lived with the knowledge my entire life, but I hardly understand.” 

“Who would want you dead?” Ingrid asks, reaching for another hunk of fish. Though her mouth is twisted rapturous from the good eats, her eyes are hard with flint. 

Despite Ingrid’s question, Flayn only stares at him, some unspoken thing painting her eyes gooey and infinite. But he does not know what question she asks, let alone what answer she could be seeking. 

“Perhaps I have said too much,” she says. “Rhea kept her secrets for good reason.” 

“And Byleth?” he asks rather than, _ What is she? What are you? _

Again, Flayn stares at him with eyes too old for her youthful face. In the steel of her eyes, he can watch the fall of empires. 

“She took to exploring the monastery before Arianrhod,” Flayn says. “And I do not know what manner of knowledge she found, but I know it troubled her.”

Byleth had written of daily annoyances and fish she had caught and the pressures of her duties and the shape of the moon in the sky, but never of jaunts of exploring or upsetting discoveries. She hid so much that the truth of her seemed only a fraction of her true being. And he has been too foolish to do anything but love her. 

When he fails to provide a response, the rest of the meal passes in stony silence with only the pop of the dimming fire and Ingrid’s chewing as accompaniments. There is much he would ask of Flayn, but whatever answers she could give, he fears they would pale in comparison to the truth. Whatever the reality of this mess was, only Byleth could answer to it. Wherever she was. If she was. 

“Thank you for the meal,” Ingrid says after the rest of the fish rests solidly in her belly. Flayn smiles.

“I am glad to share it.” 

Dimitri stands and offers a weak nod to Flayn. His share of the fish lies largely untouched on his plate. Ingrid follows suit, moving to open the door. 

“I look forward to seeing you both tomorrow at Garreg Mach,” Flayn says by way of goodbye.

Dimitri leaves without another word, eager to be free of Flayn’s piercing stare. Ingrid shuts the door softly so that it barely sounds against the lush calls of the owls. Mind a storm of dense though, Dimitri halts just before the creek. He must address Ingrid, even though he is loath to do so. Swallowing a knot in his throat, he manages, “The things we discussed—”

Ingrid shakes her head, interrupting him with a voice smooth and clipped.

“Your secrets are your own, your majesty,” she says. There is anger there, but it is mostly disappointment. Another bridge burned by his own hand. Then, she gestures for him to lead the way back to camp. 

And he does. And he does not speak another word for the rest of the night, thoughts swollen and distended with thoughts of Byleth and the yawning darkness that dwells in his memory of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back I'm back I'm back.  
So, Ingrid's a weird character for me, but I felt she was really the only one who could accompany Dimitri to this strange, strange meeting with Flayn. And Flayn, ugh. I love her and her weird little oddities ;-;  
Shoutout to MaMinette for just being an all-around boss and helping me to find the motivation to get back into writing this!  
I love hearing from y'all so much and I hope y'all know just how much I appreciate you!!  
On another note, I hope all is well and that you are safe and healthy. Time's are strange and awful right now, but it's important that we focus our efforts into positivity and hope, rather than get bogged down in the doom and gloom. Feel free to hit me up on twitter or tumblr at CazBunnyWrites or reach out for my discord tag if you need someone to talk to or are feeling stressed. I have lots of 3houses memes lol <3


	18. Another Tragedy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another tragedy befalls Fodlan.

Clad in heavy trappings fit for a blizzard and not the pleasant summer breeze, Dimitri stands overlooking the once glorious Hrym mountains, now a blight of rubble and rock on the face of the continent. Jagged points of rock jut from the earth like great panes of glass, breaching from the even spread of destruction at random intervals. The smell of death is all about the place, burrowing through the tight wrap of wool over his mouth to fill the cavern between his teeth with the phantasmic tang of stale blood. Curls of magic stretch through the air and pry at his layers, an afterthought of whatever had felled the insurmountable rock. 

Dedue stands beside him, arms crossed and face stripped. His eyes, squinted and dark, are listless despite his grave expression. Shadows of tragedy dust the drip of his mouth and the bend of his brow. Duscur had not looked as Hrym does now, but to Dimitri, and surely to Dedue as well, they feel one and the same. There is the same suffocating silence, the same phantom pressure, the same sticky sunlight.

On the ledge just ahead, Felix sits with his legs stretching towards the valley below. His shoulder blades strain against the leather of his uniform, two stumps of bone longing to take flight from the heavy concerns of the body. Dimitri does not know what tragedy haunts the slope of his stature, the death of his brother or his father or some other unspoken thing, but knows one lingers.

It was only a few days ago that word had reached Fhirdiad of the devastation that had leveled the Hrym mountains, but it had only taken three days for Dimitri and his Left and Right Hands to venture to the site. His counselors protested the journey, but he had to see for himself. One fort demolished by hellfire was cause enough for alarm, but with the destruction of the mountains, panic blisters the continent, threatening to bloom into full-blown revolt. And Dimitri needed to know the extent of what threatens his people.

The former Duke Aegir and current regent of the region reads off a list of known and suspected casualties, shepherds and foragers and mystics who had claimed the mountains as home. Blessedly, the human toll does not rival Arianrhod. Still, there are too many whose bodies will never be found, eternally entombed by the shattered rock.

When the list of the presumed dead offers no more names, Ferdinand says, “Without the mountains to buffer the winds, the climate will change drastically. Animals surviving the calamity have already ventured out into civilization, ruining crops and threatening livestock. Already, the villages in the area have sent pleas of royal intercession. They fear a failed crop and—”

Ferdinand continues, but his words have been hollowed out, bursts of sound around an empty core as the wind takes Dimitri’s thoughts elsewhere to the place they have been so apt to wander since the news broke.

Arianrhod had been destroyed in Byleth’s presence, perhaps _because of _Byleth’s presence and the mountains, smote by the same infernal force… Had Byleth been here? Had she brought the wrath of the heavens down over her head once more? But why? What allure could the mountains have held for her?

Dimitri wracks his brain for a snippet of history to illuminate the mystery, but nothing arises. Beside him, Felix plucks a pebble from the ground and flings it out into the new valley. Dimitri loses sight of it immediately, his eye failing to trace its path against the bleached bones of the wasteland.

“The people are terrified,” Ferdinand says. “Some claim this is the Goddess’ punishment for an imposter on the throne.”

The notion is unsurprising. Dimitri has entertained the same thought. Rhea had said the Goddess lived within Byleth. Perhaps this was his punishment for defiling her.

“Bullshit,” Felix says and, for a moment, Dimitri mistakes his fervor as a response to his own thoughts. Felix throws another pebble, bigger than the first, but it too disappears into the maw of muted color. “If the Goddess wanted the boar dead, Fhirdiad would be a sinkhole.”

Ferdinand runs a delicate, gloved hand through his brilliant red hand, stretching the strands above his shoulder like a lady’s fan. His fingers, covered in the thin veneer of black leather seem a massive spider, creeping through the long lochs.

“I have posited the same,” Ferdinand says. His voice is strong and his head held high. He makes a good mockery of a loyal servant to the throne that he is unsubtle in believing should be his. “It makes little sense to strike so indiscriminately.”

Unless the strikes were not indiscriminate. Unless Byleth was also in the Hrym mountains.

But Dimitri does not speak on the subject. There would be too much to explain. Ingrid is his only confidant on the subject of his estranged lover and she is in Gautier, assisting Sylvain in bolstering the border with Sreng. And Dedue, whatever he knows or suspects, does not ask and Dimitri says nothing to further elicit his concerns. 

“Some say this is proof of the Church’s failings,” Ferdinand says. “Proof of Edelgard’s vision.”

Ferdinand says nothing Dimitri does not already know, but still, he wishes the man would stop speaking. The apex of his skull pangs, the claws of mania sinking ever deeper. He imagines her laughter as it had been in their childhood, bright and clear and oozing life, ringing out over the remnants of the Hrym mountains like the trill of birdsong.

Felix says something, some sharp, biting thing, but it only serves as a feeble gloss to Dimitri’s thoughts. He spirals, deeper than he should let himself go, and he thinks of a world without war; a world he had once thought within reach. But war is ever-present, externally, internally, existentially.

“This is proof of nothing other than the evils of man,” Dedue says. They are pretty words, but words all the same. When Dedue’s gaze cuts to him, Dimitri knows they have been said for his benefit. But they do not comfort. They inflame.

“Whoever or whatever may be behind this will know no peace once they have been uncovered,” Dimitri says. He thinks of the marks of torture splayed across Byleth’s body and the hard violet of shielded eyes and the twisted thing that had greeted him in the Imperial Throne room bearing Edelgard’s face and the innocent made into monsters by shadowy hands and the fires that torched Garreg Mach and the moldering bodies of the unjustly butchered and the cries of the freshly orphaned with their small hands bloodied and broken and the bodies of his family made bloodless, headless, lifeless. He sees, from the vantage of a hawk, the plumes of smoke rising from the wreckage like hands waving for help.

“You would challenge divine will?” Ferdinand asks. Though Dimitri can see the challenge curled in the other man’s lips, he does not acknowledge it, looking past it to grasp at the fever of his past that had driven him to kill and slaughter and rise above the rats scurrying around in their self-made filth.

And, puffed with the prospect of glorious vengeance, says, “I will not make peace with a Goddess that will not answer.”

The high fades with his ill-thought words. He no longer floats high above in the clouds, planning his retaliation against those that would corrupt nature; he stands above the rubble with a trio of hard glares fixated on him. Dedue’s eyes are concerned, Felix’s incredulous, Ferdinand’s calculating.

“That is quite an unpopular stance,” Ferdinand says. His voice is the immaculate scrawl of a noble raising, the product of hours of lessons and trials that Dimitri had always dreaded. He is a natural politician and he schemes, just as the others scheme. But Byleth had invited him to join the Blue Lions before all the others, and had always maintained a fondness for him, even when he’d denied her and remained steadfast with the Black Eagles.

“His majesty speaks from personal grief,” Dedue says, the pleasant rumble of his voice soothing the electric edges of Dimitri’s mania. “Surely, you can understand.”

“Of course,” Ferdinand says, but his eyes, the deep hazel of a resentful stallion, say otherwise.

From the ledge, Felix grunts as he shuffles to stand. He does not brush the dirt from his pants and instead, kicks at the clump of grass he had once seated himself upon until it breaks from the cliffside and tumbles away. His hand holds fast to the hilt of Zoltan steel, an unspoken threat to the last Von Aegir.

“Do you have anything more to report or can we finally leave this blasted place?” Felix asks without turning. The snarls at the end of his words catch in the wind, carrying only the malice of his question.

“I have given all the intel I possess,” Ferdinand says. “There are too many unknowns and too many similarities.”

“Similarities?” Dimitri repeats. He is half out of his mind, half fully cemented in the present. And in-between is the bubbling rage that had once been tamed, but now lurched against its chains.

“Yes,” Ferdinand says. Then, “Has the Archbishop not spoken with you?”

For a moment, for too long a moment, Dimitri’s breath boils with surprise. The title of Archbishop and the face of his beloved are forever intertwined in his mind’s eye and, always, the word conjures the memory of her breath on his neck and her arms around his ribs.

But Byleth is gone. Another name written as an unknown in the aftermath of Arianrhod. And Rhea has awakened from the darkness of near-death to retake the mantle that she had once passed on to Byleth.

“Rhea has been preoccupied in soothing the people,” Dedue says when Dimitri doesn’t, can’t. “His majesty is to commune with her on our return to Fhirdiad.”

“Ah, I see,” Ferdinand says. “She and Flayn made pilgrimage yesterday to pay their respects.”

And, while Ferdinand pauses for someone to ask him to continue in the irritating habit of nobles who value their own words too much, Dimitri can see the two like fractured pieces of the same whole standing on the precipice of the valley as clearly he can see the stained-glass visage of the Goddess over the altar of Garreg Mach. Their hair would loop with delicate braids. Lilies would lace the plaits and hang around their shoulders and waists. They would wear the white of the blessed and the gold of the anointed. Rhea would pray, would be all skin and bone and fleshly pain, and Flayn would sing, would be all softness and sweetness and sorrow. And Byleth would be with them, the missing prong of their trifecta. The finality to which they pray.

“Rhea said that history paints the creation of the Valley of Torment with the same strokes. Hellfire from the sky. The earth torn asunder. Unparalleled destruction.” 

The vision dissipates to his memories of Ailell. The sweat beneath the shell of his armor. The stink of the heat and the bodies. The limping shadow of Byleth, a day removed from death’s door. 

“I have been to the Valley of Torment,” Dimitri says. “And this is nothing like the Valley of Torment.” 

Ferdinand nods. Overhead, wayward birds squawk as they dart past the sun. 

“I said the same, but Rhea was steadfast. She claimed this and Arianrhod were warnings to sinners in the hands of an angry Goddess. She said this was the dawn of a new age.”

Dimitri scowls and stares out over the skyline that had once boasted the mighty mountains, but the dust and smoke block out the horizon, offering only oily shimmers of whatever lay beyond. Though he knows it to be the banks of the Airmid River, he looks through the dusty shawl of destruction to the tragedy of his past and the fires that had raged through Duscur. And, he does not need to look to Felix or Dedue to know they feel the same. Standing in the face of oblivion, Dimitri knows that Rhea’s conjecture portends a new age writ in blood. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. So, I have good news and bad news. Good news is a managed to kick myself in the ass and churn out a few chapters all at once so this'll be back on regular updates for definitely the next three weeks and hopefully until this fic wraps up since I'm ahead of the game for once. Bad news is I'm looking at this fic being five chapters longer than I said the last time I made it longer. So, yikes. Hopefully that'll end up being a good thing in the long run but we'll see lol.  
So I'm kinda pulling in some elements from other routes (if you can't already tell lol) to create this post-AM route since I think its BS Dimitri never even AT LEAST learns about the slitherers. So now we have Byleth playing the part of the Devs and keeping it from him still lol.  
Byleth will return soon, but, for now, she's just content haunting poor Dimitri's every waking thought and stressing him out a bunch cuz he's highkey worried she's taking another dirt nap beneath a mountain.  
But anyway!! Thank you to all who still put up with my inconsistent update schedule!!! I appreciate you more than words can say and I love interacting with y'all! As always, kudos and comments are welcome!!!!  
Stay safe out there!!!


	19. Holy Hellfire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tense conversations are had.

The halls of Garreg Mach are clotted with the bodies of the devout. They spill out from the cathedral and across the walkways, a single mass with many mouths. They reach their hands up to the heavens with fingers that grasp at silent promises while their tongues form penance, as the Archbishop demands of them. In the flashing glints from their eyes is the same horror they all hold deep within the thrum of their hearts: Arianrhod ruined, the Hrym Mountains obliterated, their homes, their lives, all forfeit to the Goddess’ wrath.

And Rhea. Lovely Rhea, blistered and overfilled like a child’s crude attempt at a sweet-roll, stands above them all, wielding their own fear as the very instrument of their torture. If they drown in the molten rage of the Goddess, it is their own failings. If they are to emerge reborn from the holy hellfire, it is only by following where Rhea leads. And they would follow her wherever she might go. Lemmings off a cliff. Hatchlings flung from the nest.

Dimitri stands before the open bay windows of the royal quarters and listens to the snatchings of prayer that drift on high to him. He grits his teeth. His fingers press against the sculpted ledge of the window, but they do not sink into the stone as they are so apt to do. He maintains a flashing of restraint, allowing his fingers to threaten but never to enact. A pointless endeavor, yet the Crest of Blaiddyd permits him this one small blessing.

The night before, Rhea had greeted him at the gates of Garreg Mach, a shroud of silver among a pitch-black night. She had embraced him in the way of tradition, an arm slung behind his neck, a hand grasping his wrist, and coated him in the scent of the church. Oil and incense and cemetery dirt.

_“You have borne witness,” _she said with her lips like rose petals. _“The Goddess destroys so we may rise from the ashes.”_

_“Where is Byleth?” _he said, but Rhea only smiled. Her nails dug graves as she pulled away. Behind her, the cathedral towers of the monastery stretched for the heavens and the moon like a great halo above them all.

“Madness,” Felix says. “All of this.”

Felix sits on the lounge, fingers interlaced. His face is a slant of steel, cool and deadly, while his body curls around his torso, slouched but readied. Though he has said nothing of the subject, Dimitri knows he has not slept. The telltales of ache and exhaustion are all about his form. The hollow beneath his eyes bears the touch of lingering ghosts.

“It is like Fhirdiad,” Dimitri says and he knows Felix feels the same for he hunches further as if in mockery of the gargoyles that adorn the cathedral eaves. Dimitri looks out the window to the gathered mass and sees the hands of the devout as the polearms of knights and their smocks the dressing of the Kingdom, polished and shining, a bloody reckoning on the way to Duscur.

Dedue stands against the far wall, unmoving. Whatever his thoughts on the matter, he keeps to himself. Dimitri cannot fault his stoicism when he longs for the same capacity, for the same still expression and dour words, no matter the subject, for the same strength to conceal his suffering.

It is bad taste to invite so many into his quarters at one time, but there is nowhere else Dimitri could envision speaking. They wait for Mercedes, a cardinal under Byleth’s tenure, now a simple priestess among the flock. Once, Mercedes had been hesitant in divulging the inner mechanisms of the church, but now the secrets flow freely. Still, she claims the demotion conjures no ill will, says she owes her life to the church, only wants to see it restored to former glory. Whatever that meant.

Overhead, the bells ring out, heralding noon, and a flurry of doves take to the sky. Dimitri watches their white wings blur in flight until they vanish like a cloud into the horizon. Below, the unified commotion softens as the service draws to a close. The dining hall has surely finished readying troughs of food and drink now for the pilgrims. He imagines the surrounding farmlands have been bled dry to feed the demanding mouth of Garreg Mach.

From his roost, Dimitri watches the mass disperse. Individual smears of color rise from the once identical swarm, marking clear delineations between groups and peoples and classes and genders. Without the threat of eternal damnation to codify them, they are just everyday people with their everyday worries.

There is the teasing of memory, some sighed words that Byleth had once spoken in the dead of night, but he cannot remember. The things that he had thought impossible to lose have begun to slip away into the mire of the past. Dimitri rubs at the bridge of his nose and scrunches his face around it.

A knock at the door and Dedue has the hallway revealed before the knock can even fully ring. A shock of honeysuckle hair. The smell of cinnamon. Mercedes steps inside without fanfare, twisting her hands around themselves like a dog chasing its own tail.

“Your majesty,” Mercedes says as the door swings shut behind her. She wears the garb of a priestess, a lily-white cotton dress with heavy sleeves, and the circlet of the Archbishop’s blessed few.

Dropping her head and lifting the edge of her skirts, Mercedes falls into a deep curtesy, more reminiscent of genuflection than a proper curtesy, but Dimitri has never been one to judge. He nods when she rises, warping his face into an approximation of happiness. Facial expressions have always come difficult to him, even when genuine.

Before she moves, Mercedes looks to Dedue, something slippery and honeyed shifting in her gaze, and Dimitri focuses on the glint of sunlight over his gauntlet. He twists his wrist and chases the liquid light around in the black metal. He does not think of the accidental eavesdropping he had done earlier, when he had caught conversation dribbling along the hallway walls like condensation in the sauna. He does not think of Mercedes soft voice rising from the crevices of stone, mid-sentence, to say, _“—wrong to mourn him, love him, knowing what he was.” _He does not think of Dedue’s sober voice turned hard as he had responded, _“You cannot help the way you feel.” _He does not think of Mercedes’ fallen face with her mouth frozen and pert like a statue’s, when he had finally rounded the corner. He does not think of her final words that struck at the old wound over his shoulder, looping endlessly around his head while she and Dedue stared like he had appeared before them in the nude. _“I wish I could. Wish I could make the world hurt a little less.” _

Now, Mercedes nods to Felix as she makes her way for the lounge, wedging herself beside him so that he has no choice but to scoot over or snuggle up beside her. Her smile stretches up through her heavily-lidded eyes when he scooches away with a grumble and a roll of his eyes.

“What news do you bring?” Dimitri asks.

“Only news of the frenzy below. Since Rhea broke from her sleep, she has been driven by this _fervor. _Now, she has found an outlet for it.”

Felix snorts and says, “She has always been fervent.”

It is not the first time Mercedes has suggested such, but now Dimitri has seen for himself the extent of Rhea’s fervor. But Felix has only ever seen what he wants to see. He is stubborn in ways others could only wish to be. 

Mercedes shakes her head. Her hands fold over themselves in her lap, slipping over and over one another, and Dimitri does not think of a dog this time, but of a warren of rabbits, newborn and baby-soft, wriggling and thumping about and against each other, a pulsing heart buried beneath the dirt. He winces and the fragmented image seeps into the light of day.

“Not like this. She is hellbent. She says infection still festers in the veins of Fodlan even while Edelgard lies dead and rotted.”

The last day of the war pulses through his body like nausea. Enbarr. The final push. Soldiers and civilians ringing around the castle gates. Their faces filthy, silver rivulets snaking through the sweat and grime. Someone, Seteth? Felix? Byleth? Someone calls for them to stand down, but they do not. They ready their weapons like children and, like children, they all fall down. Their bodies limp and bloodless, spell out the truth. Edelgard had given the order to retreat. But they could not forsake their homes, their beliefs, their emperor. 

Dimitri rubs at his mouth while Mercedes looks on with her lantern eyes. Felix’s storm cloud has reformed over his head, darkening his scowl and ringing his eyes in dark. From the corner, Dedue drops his gaze to the floor.

“She will start a holy war at this rate,” Dimitri says. His voice lacks the anger he feels. It is barren as the tundra of Galatea.

“Arianrhod changed everything,” Mercedes says, her voice low and smooth. “She says the church was punished for allowing war to swallow Fodlan. She says the mountains fell to punish Adrestia. To root out the remaining traitors and blasphemers.”

It is tempting to believe in divine wrath when he had blindly followed the whims of the infernal and the damned for years. But he is a different man now than he was. If the Goddess’ wrath has truly befallen Fodlan, then she has done an awful job of identifying the source of her ire. 

“That doesn’t even make _sense_,” Felix says and he beats a fisted hand over the flat of his thigh. Errant hairs brush at his brow and he swipes them away with a huff. His hair never obeys the rigid leather of its bindings, but he never lets it lie free. Not like Glenn—

No. Dimitri will not let his thoughts stray there. Not now. So, he distracts himself with hollow motions, folding an arm over his chest and balancing the other atop it to buttress his chin. It is a pose that conveys great consternation, one he has perfected over the years.

“It needn’t make sense,” Mercedes says. “It only needs to be believed.”

Her words fester, but not for long. Dedue says, “She leaves his majesty few options.”

Felix fixes his stare on Dimitri, but Dimitri imagines he is staring through him, out into the soft blues of midday. Felix says, “It is compliance or it is war.”

The ringing of _war _is resonant as the church bells. It is a heavy word that leaves the full-blossomed heft of metal on his tongue. And in the ringing daze, Dimitri’s mind fractures between the prospect of bloodshed and the grounding force that has become his crutch. What would Byleth say? Would she say anything? Probably something small and understated. Probably something like _fuck_.

So, Dimitri says, low and gruff as he can manage, “War is not an option.”

There comes no response for there is nothing to be said. The truth has been rooted out and the response has been meted. Later, he knows Felix will protest and Dedue will applaud, but now, they only offer slack jaws and endless eyes. Only Mercedes meets his stare. She offers a small smile. It is pitiful, but he appreciates the effort.

When the knock comes at the door soon after with a call for him, he is nothing but relieved for the distraction. Until the door opens to reveal Flayn in all her religious finery and an announcement.

“The Archbishop requests an audience.”

Felix’s raised brow catches his attention before he nods to Flayn and offers small partings to the others. He cannot say no, even though he would rather leap to the courtyard below than speak with Rhea. Dedue’s gaze is heavy, a gaze of caution, a reminder of restraint.

Flayn gives a wan smile and then turns, leaving without waiting for him to follow, though he does, quickening his pace to reach her side.

They walk in silence from the guards standing watch over his quarters. Once they turn a corner and ascend a flight of stairs, Flayn says, “Rhea has sent the knights to occupy Abyss.”

He scowls, says, “Yuri would never—”

“Yuri is missing,” Flayn says. Her voice is a rushed whisper for him alone, even in these silent corridors. “As are the other Wolves.”

The great unspoken thing, the bleeding center of it all, goes unacknowledged. Byleth’s name swims in the gulf between each of Flayn’s breaths and reaches for his throat with mottled hands. The Wolves are gone without a word and so it must be Byleth that has dragged their names onto ledgers marked _missing_.

“What have you learned, Flayn?”

Flayn’s eyes do not stray from the path ahead. She holds her head high. Something has changed within her since their conversation in the cabin. There is fire when there had only been smoke. A fire surely started by Rhea’s frantic hands.

“Tread carefully, my friend,” Flayn says. “There is much you do not know.”

_Why will you not tell me? _he wants to scream, but the scent of oil and incense rising from her skin shudders like a scream of _stop_. Flayn will not tell him a thing. Not so long as Rhea keeps the noose tight around her neck.

Dimitri asks no questions and Flayn offers no answers. They continue in silence the rest of the short walk to the Archbishop’s chambers. Tapestries, woven as donations after the Unification War had drawn to a close, flash on either side of him: the Saints, the Crests, the Goddess.

He keeps his head down, focusing on the divots between bricks rather than the artful renderings of things he’d much sooner forget.

There are no soldiers standing guard over the Archbishop’s chambers. There is only the empty hallway and a door with handles of ivory. And Flayn, who stands solid and true beside him, unwavering and uncomforting as she opens the door to bid him entrance into Rhea’s domain.

A stench like fallen leaves envelops him as he enters, a far cry from the usual holy scents that assail him in her presence, and it only grows stronger as his feet take him to the heart of the room, where Rhea looms at a table set for tea.

Byleth had called the chambers a pretty prison with all its gleaming marble and Rhea sits like a model prisoner. Her hair is cinched tightly around her headdress while her hands lay clasped around each other on the tablecloth. The heavy garments of her position swallow her svelte form, which is truly a stone’s throw from skeletal, so she seems more an animate gown than a human being.

“Dimitri.”

Not his title. Not his station. His name, small and belittling as it is.

“Your grace,” he says, decorum guiding him while his frustration burns white-hot.

“Please. Sit.”

He does and the chair squeaks beneath him. Before it settles, he considers the notion that it will break and leave him sprawled on the glittering floor. But that would be too great a mercy.

“Chamomile.”

She gestures with both hands, keeping them latched around each other, to the steaming teapot and the empty cup resting before it. She does not smile. He does not reach for the tea.

“Byleth says it is your favorite.”

Uncertainty twists like spoilt meat in his stomach. These little, coded conversations are beyond his grasp. They are better suited for those more staunchly steeped in the shadows of courtly politics. Still, he tries.

“What else does she say?”

The fine edge of Rhea’s mouth twitches downward like the slope of a spoon.

“She says little now.”

For too long, she only stares, her face still and smooth as a porcelain doll. He does not flinch, though his skin crawls from her serpentine gaze. When she drops her eyes and shifts in her seat, the tension moves from his strained eye to his stunted lungs, reminding him to breathe, even though it stings.

“I have something for you.”

She reaches into the folds of her dress and retrieves a folded square of paper. Then, she unfolds it, straightens out the crinkles, and hands it over the steaming kettle that steadily grows cold for him to take.

It is a smudged penciled likeness of a man, ragged and shirtless. A heartbeat later and he recognizes the shaggy mop of hair, the sharp jut of Blaiddyd nose, and a scar across the naked bicep that too perfectly mirrors one of his own to be a mistake. It is not perfect and it would certainly never hang as a royal portrait, but his likeness is recognizable as is the handwriting beneath it.

_Aff. 5:17. _

A verse he knows by heart because of its frequent use within folded declarations of undying passions for unsuspecting classmates penned by Sylvain that passed through his fingers and into the trash.

_There is no greater offering to the Goddess than selfless love. _

It is blasphemous. It is ruinous. And it breaks his heart.

In the fleeting darkness of a blink, he allows himself to sink into fantasy, imagining Byleth with charcoal stained fingers hunched over her desk, scribbling with the sharp tip of her tongue peeking between her lips and thinking of him. But he bares his eye to the light and extends the paper over the table, back to Rhea.

“You know I cannot keep this.”

Without the rubbed softness of the crinkled paper, his heartbeat quiets.

“I know.”

The smooth of her hand fractures with blights of magic, separating her fingers into distinct islands from the continent of her hand. The magic licks across the paper, catching in the fissures of charcoal until the webbing grows and shatters. Then, there is nothing but ash, and Rhea wipes her hand against the edge of the tablecloth.

“Our enemies are the same,” Rhea says, a hard line made of her lips.

“The church cannot survive on its own,” he says and her response is lightning quick, striking with heat and precision, to rend his words to shreds and to shame him.

“Edelgard thought the same.”

Dimitri scowls and barks, far less refined than he would like, “Do not align my words with hers.”

There is the lick of a smile on Rhea’s mouth. Dimitri fists his hands open and closed like a flower blossoming in reverse as heat rises from his neck and into his face as the steam continues to rise from the kettle.

“Be wise to temper your words lest the wrong message be taken.”

“Stop speaking in riddles!” He beats his fists against the table. The empty cups jump. The tea kettle overturns. The table cloth stains brown in a growing pool while excess liquid drips to the tiled floor in a rushing splatter. Rhea rights the tea kettle, but leaves the mess untouched while his face burns. She says, “Allow me to be transparent. There will come a day when I require your strength, both in country and in presence. You would be wise to heed my call lest secrets come to light that should be left in the dark.”

A threat, but at least it is out in the open, stated plainly and delivered openly. She could sow poison and revolt as easily as she stokes fear, could see him overthrown and executed, properly this time. And she would, happily to see her means met.

It was simply too bad to her that her threat carries no teeth when he has already resolved to comply if only for a time, to see the end of all this madness. So, instead of posturing his position, he asks, “Where is Byleth?”

Rhea stares. Flits her eyelashes in slow, butterfly motions. Her lips are all sharp edges and her voice all scorched earth as she says, “My child, if I knew, would I deign myself to this?”

Of course. How could he have even entertained the notion that she would threaten him herself if she had any other option? Surely, she would have dripped poison in Byleth’s ear to influence him and she had. For exactly how long, he isn’t sure, but it had happened and he had fallen prey. He would have promised anything to the church if it meant Byleth’s safety and Rhea knew it. Knows it. Because it still holds true. Despite everything. Because of everything.

Somehow, he smiles, jagged and rueful, and says, “No. I do not suppose you would.”

Then, he stands without dismissal, taking small thrill in the hesitant quiver of Rhea’s smugness, and leaves without pleasantry. Flayn stands on the other side of the door with her head hung low so that her ringlets shade her eyes. He knows she must feel his glare, but she does not move to acknowledge him or even to breathe. He could throttle her for throwing him blind into Rhea’s den, but what would that prove except Rhea’s supremacy? Except his instability? There is darkness within him still, no matter how he tries to deny it, and it will break free again if he is not careful.

And he knows what he must do, even if he hates himself for it, even if it only affirms that this darkness will always dwell in his chest. He must kill something and, hopefully, the church has not yet bled the surrounding forests completely dry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I could regale you all with tales of personal strife and a week spent fighting the puke flu, but I shall instead say this: I suck and I am sorry that I said I would have this up and then didn't but it's up now and I hope you can forgive me!  
It's really crazy to me that I had like no intentions of Rhea playing any role in the plot of this story and now I'm like... how could she not??? How did I think she could just be chilling on the sides?? She's great. I love her. She's so shady and manipulative lol.  
I also really love the idea of Dimitri hating all the political circle talk because I hate political circle talk. Like it's fun to see, but shit to write and I have had ENOUGH. So Dimitri has also had enough lol. But I mean, fair because Rhea loves just jerking people around and I spent the whole first half of 3H waiting to tell her off lol.  
Also I uhhhhhhhhh really love like religious symbolism and scripture nonsense and I may or may not have spent way too much of my free time coming up with what religious texts from Fodlan would look like so have this one very small glimpse of a made up verse for a made up religion for a made up plot that I spent a long time thinking about lol  
Also also, just a heads up but I'll probably be overhauling chapter 15 into something, uh, less cringey. It won't impact the overall plot or anything major, but it has been a thorn in my side since I wrote it and I want it to be DIFFERENT lol  
Thank you all for your comments and kudos!! It means the world to me that this fic means something to someone!! It's all I could ever ask for as an author!!!!!! I hope you all continue to enjoy<3


	20. Tentative Alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sojourn to Almyra prompts new information

Almyra is a pretty place. Picturesque, like the way Dimitri had once thought Fhirdiad to be before he had traveled the continent and known better. The people, however, are not as nice as those in Fhirdiad, but perhaps that is because he is the crowned ruler of the great unspoken word, “Fodlan.” Like his people, the Almyrans seem to enjoy the peace in theory but hesitate to welcome their former enemies with open arms. Claude, when Dimitri sees him, speaks little of the unrest facing his rule, but Dimitri knows it is there from the whispers and the glares that precede his entrance into the Almyran capital. Claude is charismatic, smart, and driven, but there are still those who cling fast to the moldering past in Almyra just as there are those who do the same all across Fodlan.

His arrival in Almyra is a rather simple affair compared to the fanfare of the past. There are no parades to herald his approach or nobles lining his entrance into the capital. After the initial peace had been achieved, the excitement of it all has boiled over, even for him. It is a long-standing appointment, made to reevaluate the terms of peace established a year past.

Still, it is nice to be among the sweet summer air and ocean spray of the sun-soaked continent of Almyra, especially after the hell of enduring Rhea only the week prior. Even at its best, summer in Fhirdiad is marred by temperamental weather and little precipitation. There are no berries swollen with sweet juice on the vines or savory fish with glorious scales patrolling the rivers in Fhirdiad like there are in Almyra. Despite the droll affair, Dimitri’s sojourn to Almyra is not one he dreads when it arrives. Sometimes, when he finds himself in brief moments of fancy, he entertains the notion of combing the glistening shoreline for shells and sea glass as he once had as a boy on a trip to the Adrestian coast. But there is no time for such foolish endeavors when diplomacy is needed.

With a languid flourish, Dimitri signs his name to the updated peace accord. There have been few changes beyond reworded sentences and renegotiated trade routes. Still, there is polite applause from the gathered nobility. Then, they filter out, bowing to their respective kings and leaving in a hurry. When the room is empty beyond a handful of stragglers, Claude comes to Dimitri’s side and asks, “Say, have you ever seen the sunset over the Ylissean sea?”

Before Dimitri can even voice his answer, Claude juts his head to the door and says, “It’s quite lovely. Please, allow me to show you.”

There is an air of mischief Claude had once possessed when their respective rules had been only over the houses of the academy rather than whole nations of people. His eyes glint with the zeal of a boy of eighteen.

So, Dimitri follows with Dedue supplementing his shadow. They travel through high arches and under scalloped ceilings that filter light through pigmented glass and past geometric stylings on all the walls that make flowers and suns out of sharp tile. An ember of jealousy curls in the small of his back, envying the art made of every jut of stone and every piece of plaster. Castle Fhirdiad is a glorified slab of concrete compared to the splendor of this place. But perhaps there is still hope for Fhirdiad. He remembers hearing of Ignatz’s talent with a brush and Bernadetta’s skill with a needle and, perhaps, he can find enough coin in the coffers to see Fhirdiad reach a similar splendor.

Claude leads him to a wing of the palace Dimitri has never ventured. It is just as ornate as the rest, but the tiling boasts new colors and patterns. There are no guards or nobles milling about the halls as there had been, only a scurrying servant every so often. Eventually, they reach the end of the hall and a set of heavy doors. Claude yanks them open and gestures for him to pass.

The doors open to a seaside balcony with a sturdy railing and a canopy overhead. Alone on the balcony, a figure stands, made formless by a heavy hood. But they are short and stand with their weight balanced between their feet just so and the wind takes on the bouquet of their skin and it is so clean and so strong that Dimitri hopes. The sunlight is neon around her silhouette and he can taste his heartbeat, hot and erratic, on his tongue. He imagines how her hair would be turned lighter than seafoam. How her skin would look kissed gold by the Almyran sun. And how she would hug him, damn the consequences. How her arms would cinch around his waist and her head rest just beneath his collarbone, just over the flutter of his heart. How she would explain herself, her absence, her secrets, and how the soft breeze would take her words and make them into music to nurse the unrelenting throb in his chest. How everything would be okay because she would be here and healthy and _alive_.

But it isn’t Byleth. Of course. It isn’t Byleth.

Dimitri keeps his shoulders square and his spine straight. He is well rehearsed in stifling disappointment.

“You sure kept me waiting,” Hilda says, turning and dropping her hood to reveal the full bounce of her strawberry hair. Her face is thinner than Dimitri remembers, probably sapped by the weight of keeping the glittering chunk of gemstone on her ring finger and all the expectations that come along with it aloft. Still, she is striking as always, a force of nature with her glaring eyes and whipcord strong arms, straining against the sheer material of her sleeves.

“Peace is a process,” Claude says with a shrug. Hilda scoffs and does not move to greet Claude with any familiarity and, somehow, it lifts Dimitri’s spirits a tiny bit. She offers him a nod and he responds in kind, ever thankful for her lacking adherence to decorum.

“Just don’t kill each other,” she says. “Isn’t that easy enough?”

Claude laughs and moves to embrace her, trapping her about the shoulders and pressing a kiss to the side of her forehead. She gives a look of disgust, but her mouth hints at a smile. Dimitri resists a scowl. It seems so easy for them to love one another. So easy, in fact, that he has heard rumor of the begrudging blessing of their pending nuptials by even the most severe of Claude’s cabinet.

“To think the answer was right in front of me the entire time!” Claude says, pecking at her forehead again. “Your mind never ceases to amaze me!”

Dimitri watches them and he thinks how lovely it must be for them. How wonderful it must be to be them. Below, the sea laps at the base of the castle, crashing and receding with soothing rhythm.

“I suppose it was not the sunset that required your attention?” Dimitri asks.

Claude releases Hilda. He shrugs with the smile that had become his trademark at the Academy and says, “Nonsense! I assure you; the sunset is far more striking and certainly more pleasant to behold!”

Hilda only rolls her eyes, cutting her fiancé to the quick faster than any witty retort could. Dimitri expects another bout of verbal jousting between the two, but Hilda turns instead to Dedue, who lurks near the door, and asks, “Would you care to see the royal garden Dedue? They’ve managed to cultivate a great deal of Duscurian violets.”

Dedue looks to him without giving any inkling of an answer. Dimitri nods, gives silent approval. If Claude bore any ill will towards him, he would be successful in expressing it and Dimitri would prefer to suffer far from the public eye. Not that he expects such malice from Claude. But Dedue suspects everyone. Thankfully, he has grown laxer in the peacetime and moved from dedicated guard to dedicated friend.

“Yes. I suppose I would,” Dedue says to Hilda. She clasps her hands together in a rehearsed expression of joy and her ring flashes molten in the sun.

“Great!” she says and then she heads for the door, gesturing for Dedue to follow with a hasty huff and hurried hand. Before the doors swallow them back inside, Dedue offers one final sidelong glance back at Dimitri and then he is gone.

Claude moves to the railing and Dimitri follows. Below, the sea is smooth with foam, but sunlight catches in the rolling waves, turning the entire coastline into flashes of gold and silver.

“I will waste no more of your time,” Claude says. “My talents have been requested by a private entity. Within your territory.”

A steady buzzing overtakes the swell of the sea. Claude speaks of treason. Of revolt. Of charred land and severed heads and pealing cries for victory. He has expected as much, transitions of power are never easy, but so soon only speaks to his own failings. Already, Dimitri’s skin crawls with the imagined shadow of buzzards circling overhead. 

“Fret not, they have not asked me to turn my gifts on your reign.”

Dimitri scowls.

“Then why seek you out at all?”

Claude crosses his arms and shifts his weight back, striking a pose more like an aspiring philosopher than a reigning monarch.

“Indeed, it smacks of poor forethought. Or far too much forethought.”

Dimitri rubs at his brow. He is not unused to Claude’s constant couching and circular speak, having once enjoyed the banter Claude is so gifted in employing, but it grows old. Once, there had been a third member to their conversations, and Edelgard had always chastised Claude for speaking with such a flair for melodrama and mystery. Dimitri knew she did so for his sake. She and Claude could entertain each other for hours with pretty wordplay and witty retorts, but he often fell short. But, even then, he’d never gone so far to mistake her small kindness for genuine care or compassion, only a form of charity.

“Your meaning?”

Quickly, as if expecting his confusion, Claude says, “I was not sought after for my crown, but for a shared history.”

Dimitri knows little of Claude’s history. He only partially knows of his family tree and the machinations behind his ascension to King of Almyra under a different name. It is the same for most of Fodlan as well so then, Claude’s contact must be someone well connected, someone privileged enough to know of his dual identity.

“Someone from the Academy,” Dimitri says. “Someone who believes you trustworthy.”

It is all he can manage to say. The pieces have all fallen into place, but he cannot give voice to the realization they bring. More than anything, it stings. First, Yuri. Now, Claude.

And she hides from him.

Anger, frustration, envy all slosh about in his skull. It makes no sense. Or, it makes perfect sense, if only she had never said that she loved him.

“I thought you should know,” Claude says. Then, “If you didn’t already.”

Dimitri swallows his anger. There will be time later for him to process or, better yet, ignore the surge of emotion and he instead considers his words. Claude has let slip something of great import. It is only just that he do the same. He says, “I knew. For a time. I have not received word in months.”

Claude nods and strokes his chin.

“I feared as much. It seems our friend has taken great pains to remain unseen.”

Dimitri pauses. He weighs what to ask and what to keep hidden. He has never spoken to Claude of his relationship with Byleth, but Claude has always been perceptive. He cannot assume that he does not know just as he can not assume that he does know. Besides, it is impossible to know what Byleth has let slip. Again, she has made things more complicated for him.

“How long have you suspected she survived Arianrhod?” he asks.

Claude laughs, says, “She spent five years at the bottom of a river. I never doubted she survived Arianrhod.” 

Dimitri thrums his fingers against the railing. He had thought himself special to know of her time spent in those five years of war. But it seems he is not the only one. Who else has she told? What else has she said? More than anything, he wants to ask Claude, _Why you? _but thinks better of it. He asks, “Will you offer your help?”

Claude shrugs, but the motion is without the same ease as it was before.

“I believe I will. Anything for an old friend.”

Dimitri grips the railing, but he doesn’t even fear breaking it. He is too tired. Too defeated by an enemy that is not even his enemy.

“But I see no reason to keep my involvement and discoveries a secret from another old friend,” Claude says.

“Why? Why tell me any of this?”

Claude is slow in responding, shifting to lean against the railing and look out over the sea. He looks a far cry from the impish boy who had terrorized the Academy with schemes and gaffs, though his eyes are the same; shrewd and sad. Dimitri regrets, not for the first time, that he had taken greater lengths in his youth to know Claude better. For a long time, he has suspected their demons exhibit similar torments.

“The sea is especially calm today, is it not?” Claude says at last. “It has been quite unruly these past few days. The fishermen have had to hold off on returning to shore. Perhaps we will see them bring in their hauls tonight.”

Dimitri scowls, says, “Claude.”

Claude sighs and his head droops, but he does not tear his gaze from the sparkling sea.

“You did me a great service in coming to Derdriu. I owe you my life and the lives of my friends and countrymen.”

Claude’s words are kind, kinder than he deserves, but they are hollowed out in the center.

“But more than that. At the Academy. You and Edelgard were my first friends, even before the Deer, and I still consider you such, even if you did put a lance through my wyvern at Gronder. She’s fine, by the way.”

The small attempt at humor is pointless. He remembers nothing from Gronder other than the swollen weight of his tongue in his mouth and the sheen of Edelgard’s armor across the bloody battlefield. Still, he does not doubt that he did such a thing. He would have permitted no interruptions in his quest for Edelgard’s head.

“Do you ever wonder what the world would be like if she hadn’t kept so many secrets? If she’d come to us instead of starting a damned war?”

Dimitri shakes his head. He is uncertain of so much, but not of this. He says, “She was too prideful. She never would have come to us.”

Claude hangs his head low, staring straight down.

“I know you are right, yet I still find myself wondering.”

Dimitri gives no response. He has spent so long wondering that he has grown fatigued. Wondering only raises questions; it answers none. But, from the sallow beneath Claude’s eyes, he suspects Claude knows the same, but cannot help but wonder. Just as he cannot help but wonder, even if the answers stay forever out of his reach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiiiiiiiiiii. I'm sorry for the delay. I had to write 40+ pages of creative writing for class and that took... a lot longer than expected LOL. But I'm back with an update!!  
So. Claude. What a man. I love him a lot and he's such an interesting character but he's such a pain to write from Dimitri's POV ;-;  
I'm so excited for the next chapter. There's gonna be rain and there's gonna be fog and there's gonna be some evil shenanigans >:)  
I hope you all enjoy!!! As always, lemme know what you think!! I appreciate you all more than you can possibly know <3 <3


	21. En Route

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A storm en route brings an unexpected challenge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Violence and gore

Though it proves arduous and exhausting, traveling the continent proves to be Dimitri’s favorite duty as king. Perhaps it is because of the long periods between his travels and the natural beauty of the continent. Or, perhaps, it is because his advisors seldom travel alongside him, choosing instead to view the countryside from the posh windows of lacquered caravans, and he can enjoy a reprieve, no matter how short, from the constant squawking over politics and appeasements. They are not bad people, they would never sit his council if he thought them bad people, but they are stubborn people, shackled to the past with jaded hopes to better the future. No matter how he surpasses their expectations, they still treat him with fragility befitting an injured child. But, it is the burden he must bear for Fodlan, even if he must forever atone for the years he left Faerghus to rot. 

The terrain he traverses now in the company of his royal party and King’s Guard is flat, low, and bare, made into a trade route several centuries past when the area was razed for lumber to build the nearby Manor Gaspard. The road is notoriously exposed and, in the past, smaller, lesser defended parties had often suffered the attentions of petty bandits. But, since the end of the Unification War, there have only been two reported attacks and both ended in the capture of the guilty parties. Though small, victories such as these give Dimitri the confidence to believe in a brighter future. One that he has a place in. 

The air is sweet with the scent of fresh-cut grass, but there is a hint of rain on the horizon. Clouds gather just beyond the edge of the sky and streak steadily through the clear blue overhead. But they are not far from their destination of Aglovale, a port village along the Rhodos Coast. Only another hour of travel at most. Hopefully, the rain will hold off until then. 

Sylvain and Ingrid, both freshly returned from Sreng, walk in front of him while Dedue and Felix flank him. The King’s Guard surrounds them all with their armor glinting like starry skies beneath the afternoon sun. 

Dimitri imagines the entire procession is quite the sight to behold. He remembers, fondly, the few times he was permitted as a child to travel alongside his father on business and how he would marvel at the mighty King’s Guard in their armored finery, how he would think they could best any foe, how he would imagine his own would look someday in the shining silver of the most decorated of knights. 

Of all he had endured in Duscur, it was how the King’s Guard’s armor had rusted so quickly from their gushing blood that surprised him the most. When he had taken the throne, he oversaw the redesign of their armor himself. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Sylvain says to Ingrid, holding his hands up as a sign of peace. Already, Ingrid glowers. Dimitri has no idea what they talk about, but he can sense that Sylvain is tempting grievous bodily harm.

“But, you might have a bit more luck if you’d let Annie do your makeup the next time you—”

Ingrid swings. Sylvain dodges with a screech, but Ingrid follows. She lands a blow on the broadside of his head. Sylvain wails and slaps a hand over his afflicted skull. 

“Fuck! Why can’t you ever leave my face alone?”

A few of the King’s Guard up ahead turn around with raised brows at the commotion. Felix huffs. Dedue shakes his head. Dimitri can only smile. Sylvain is a perpetual pest and Ingrid a bitter bully, but their antics have remained the same since they were all young children toodling around Fhirdiad while their parents debated trade routes and alliances behind locked doors. 

“It’s the perfect target,” Ingrid says. “Big and dumb and stupid.”

“You forgot annoying,” Felix says. Ingrid laughs, adds, “And ugly.” 

Sylvain looses a shrill puffing of offense at Ingrid’s addition. He turns with his hands folded in a silent, shaking plea. Always, Sylvain talks with his hands, moving them about wildly to emphasize his words. Once, Dimitri had been fooled into believing that women were charmed by the bouncing gesticulations and had, but would never admit, even imitated Sylvain’s fluid motions while speaking with a noble girl he fancied. Of course, she had thought him concussed and only years later had Dimitri realized the accentuated hand motions were not a flirtatious thing but a Gautier thing.

Now, Sylvain says, “Dimitri, your exalted excellency, are you really going to let your oldest friend be savaged like this?”

Dimitri shrugs, smiles. Though he is not the most accomplished of the group, he enjoys teasing Sylvain just as much as the others seem to. 

“I’ll allow it.” 

Sylvain throws his arms up with an exasperated sigh. 

“Did I miss a memo? Is it bully Sylvain day again?” 

“That’s next Thursday,” Ingrid says just as Felix says, “How stupid. Why would we waste time planning that?”

Sylvain shakes his head with a scoff. He says, “Oh, so you’re all just naturally assholes. Noted.”

“Goddess you’re annoying,” Felix says. His voice is so dry and malicious that Dimitri sighs. Felix always needles Sylvain, escalating teasing conversations into heated arguments. Dimitri has his suspicions as to why Felix feels the need to be so incredibly hostile to the only person he seems to genuinely enjoy spending time with, but he leaves them unsaid. He has rarely been good at surmising the complicated emotions of his friends, choosing instead to provide a shoulder to lean on rather than suggest solutions when they found themselves in strife. 

Though she had garnered a similar reputation as a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, Byleth had once told him he was a much better friend than she could ever be because he actually listened; she only pretended to. 

“I’m annoying? You’re the one arguing for no reason!”

As Sylvain and Felix continue to quarrel, a shiver bursts from the small of Dimitri’s back. He cranes his neck to look behind their procession, but there is nothing besides empty road and low-lying lichen. He rubs at his neck, massaging the sensation back into nothingness. In such an open area, it makes little sense for him to sense a watchful presence on his neck when there is nothing to be seen, but he does and he has for the last mile or so. The others do not indicate similar suspicions so he knows he must be toying with madness once more, even as the small of his back continues to shiver.

“Are you alright, your majesty?” Dedue asks. 

“Yes, of course,” Dimitri says. Then, as another shiver spreads, he adds, “I just had the oddest feeling. As though we are being watched.”

He does not miss the sudden lull in Felix and Sylvain’s argument nor the worry that tightens Dedue’s brow. 

The court mage, a stout, mousy haired replacement while Annette adjusts to motherhood, peeps up from behind him to say, “I do not sense anything, your majesty.”

Felix and Sylvain resume arguing, though with much less vigor. Ingrid stares straight ahead. Only Dedue looks at him, raising a single brow. Dimitri does not meet his eye. Instead, he rubs between his brows with the heel of his hand, careful to avoid dislocating his eyepatch. 

Dedue does not pry. He never pries. He only looks and Dimitri knows he waits for him to say something. But he never does. He wonders how long Dedue will wait for him to speak, if he will wait forever.

Ingrid, since their jaunt to the cottage and their conversation with Flayn, has been adamant that he confide in Dedue about Byleth’s previous stint in Fhridiad. She says, _ “I can tell the guilt is just eating away at you.” _ She says, _ “She can’t be mad at you for saying something when she’s just _ ** _vanished_ ** _ .” _ She says, _ “He already knows. You can tell by that look in his eye. He always knows. He’s just waiting for you to say something about it.” _

Even now, Ingrid shoots a glance back at him, narrowing her eyes when he does not respond to Dedue. He stares back at her, narrowing his own eye to match hers. She backs down with a shake of her head and a scoff. They continue along to the sounds of Felix and Sylvain’s bickering until, eventually, that peters out as well. 

Overhead, clouds roll in so quickly there is no time to even consider a storm before one begins. It turns the dirt path to muddy sludge and slows their progress. Dimitri refuses to make camp, not in such an exposed area and not with their destination so close. A few minutes in heavy rain is a small sacrifice to make for an evening in a cozy inn with warm food. His decision to press forward is met with small nods. Only Sylvain complains, but his voice soon fades into the pounding rain. 

It is an excruciating trek through the rain, but a necessary one. As the damp seeps through his armor and glues his hair against his face and neck, Dimitri placates himself with thoughts of a blazing fire and a heavy comforter. But, as the rain continues to fall and the temperature continues to drop, he finds himself thinking less of small comforts. Distress nestles in the base of his skull, igniting the rest of his thoughts with resonant dread. The rain so thoroughly drenches that he can feel its chill within the very marrow of his bones. When he breathes, the rain coats his lungs. 

He looks to the others and sees them fairing similarly. Ingrid’s mouth is stuck in a permanent scowl. Sylvain shakes the water from his hair like a dog every minute or so. Felix glowers up at the sky, wincing when the rain pierces his eyes. Dedue trudges along with his head down. Rivulets of water stream from his charcoal gray hair, made darker by the long exposure in the rain. Even the King’s Guard falters in their steps, lifting their legs with less and less vigor as the mud sucks their armored feet deeper and deeper beneath the ground with each step.

“This is hell,” Sylvain says, throwing his head back and forth so that the droplets from his hair spray out, dousing them all with an extra bit of moisture.

_ It could be worse _, Dimitri almost says but decides against it. With the way they had all reacted to his comment earlier about feeling watched, they would assuredly take his comment now with misguided concerns. If he is not careful in choosing his words, they will stare at him as if they expect him to come unraveled. 

Their delicate treatment of him has lessened since the end of the war, but he suspects it will always be this way. Only Byleth’s usual stare had lacked the constant tinge of concern that has woven its way into the eyes of the others.

“Your hair will be fine,” Felix says to Sylvain.

“How would you know? You’ve got rats living in yours,” Sylvain says.

“Shut up!” Ingrid says and they do. Dimitri is grateful for her presence. Their argument would have gone on forever without her. 

As the rain grows steadily heavier, a fog rolls in from the horizon. It is dense and cold, burrowing through every small crease and buckle in his armor to nestle against his skin. Even he, in all his magical muteness, knows that something is wrong, that this fog is not normal. 

There comes no call to halt, but they all do. Everything halts. In the still, Dimitri’s boots sink into the muck from his weight, but he does not move them. Does not breathe. He takes Areadbhar from its holster on his back. It is slick in his hands. Its glow breaches the tight grip of his fingers. Around him, Ingrid, Felix, and Sylvain do the same, removing their relics and weapons in slow, smooth motions so that the thickening air flashes with muted color. Dedue readies his ax.

At Dimitri’s side, the court mage fumbles through a spell, sending up a weak sputter of sparks that is soon smothered. The fog persists. 

“Rank up!” Ingrid shouts and, though she is right beside him, her shout echoes from far off, made fractal and fragmented from the fog. 

The knights and his friends tighten around him, contracting into a barricade of steel teeth. It is the demanded defense for a king under siege, but it is foolish. He is no simpleton in need of protection. If something sinister lurks ahead, then he would fare better facing it alone. Even two years removed from war and battle, his body is still an instrument of death. He would truly go mad if he allowed himself to exist in any other state.

But there will be no argument. Ingrid would sooner gut him herself than call the guards into another formation. 

The court mage mumbles an incantation. Incandescent magic fractures the mud at their feet and spreads out in a snaking web all around them. It pulses brighter for a short time before vanishing.

“Where is it coming from?” Felix demands, shouting over the storm, but the court mage shakes their head.

“I cannot tell,” they say, shouting in the same way Felix had.

“You can’t tell?” Sylvain says. “What the hell does that—”

Through the pounding rain and suffocating fog, there comes a screeching roar. It threatens mashed bones and ugly corpses. It comes from every direction and every angle. There is no telling if it is the roar of one beast or hundreds. It lingers until it deadens. 

Dimitri stiffens. A divine beast is near.

In the silence, no one moves. Their combined breaths stir the fog ensnaring them. Dimitri cannot even bear to blink, though his eye pleads for reprieve as he keeps it on a constant search through the fog for slight movement.

Then. The sound of slithering. The readying of weapons. A scream from a King’s Guard behind him. The crackle of metal. The dragging of a body off into the fog.

Dimitri turns, Areadbhar at the ready, but there is nothing to see, only the shadowy forms of his King’s Guard standing at the ready in the fog. There is one less of them than there should be.

“What happened?” Dimitri demands, taking a step towards the rear line. Dedue grabs his shoulder, wrenches him back. When there comes no answer, Dimitri screams, “What the hell happened?”

The knights do not look back at him. They do not move, but their bodies shake and tremble.

“Answer your king dammit!” Felix snarls, striking his Zoltan sword against his Aegis shield. One of them pipes up, shouts, “Something, I don’t know what it was. Goddess I don’t know what it was. It grabbed Felicity. Dragged her off and oh Goddess—"

Slithering again. From the other side. Dimitri whirls along with the others. Another scream. Crackling metal. This time, the King’s Guard is ready. They grab the guard’s arms and pull. Sylvain sets his arm ablaze, holds it aloft. It illuminates little, but it illuminates enough. 

Dimitri can see a great heft of slimy, coiled muscle wrapped tight around the splintered body of one of the King’s Guard. It rises, taking the body and a few struggling King’s Guard with it. It is a mountain of flesh, blubbery in the places where muscle does not bulge.

Someone screams a command to move. It may have been him. He doesn’t know. He only knows that the massive appendage meteors to the ground as he runs. It shakes the earth. Sends out a shockwave of muck and bodies and Dimitri gets caught in it, flung through the air to land flat on his back in the mud. His arm nearly separates at the shoulder from the force of Areadbhar driven into the ground and his refusal to let it go.

Sprawled on his back, Dimitri stares up at the sky. Rain slashes against his face, cutting through the splattered mud on his cheeks and forehead with ice-cold precision. His head pounds. His stomach rolls. Beneath him, the world sways, rolling like a ship at sea. At any moment, he feels as if it will launch him up into the sky, into the frigid embrace of space. 

But it doesn’t. He sits up.

Figures move in the fog. Flashes of light from relics and magic alike. Snatches of screams. Fragments of battle. The slap and pull of bodies through the mud. The pounding of rain. All around him.

He stands and falls under attack. A mage. Bolts of magic that cleave open the ground where he once stood. He lunges on instinct when the bolts take pause. Areadbhar finds purchase in soft flesh. Dimitri wrenches the lance through the mage, watches their side pop open and the tender insides spill out. For good measure, he stabs them through the neck as well.

The fog and the state of the body make it impossible to know who attacks. There are no colors nor a sigil he can distinguish. But what does it matter? They have asked for death and he is nothing if not eager to impart such a gift. 

Another attacker slips from the fog. They strike in a whirlwind of blades, scuffing his left shoulder before he can deflect their blow. They attack again and he reciprocates. Blows their stance wide open. Strikes at the center of their body. Punches Areadbhar cleanly through their chest. They struggle. They knock at Areadbhar’s haft with their swords. Dimitri drives them into the mud. Pinions them into the ground. Their swords fall from their grasp. He stomps their shoulders until they cease squirming. He rips Areadbhar free. And again, he cannot identify his attacker.

But it doesn’t matter. The battle rages. And it has been so long, so _ so _long, since he has felt such a glorious pounding of adrenaline in his chest. And he is electrified by it just as he is disgusted by it. Just as he has always been. 

Dimitri sweeps his hair back from his face and sets off into the fog. Towards the nearest embers of a relic. But he never reaches it. 

Slithering sounds behind him. He spins. The massive appendage of the divine beast races towards him. He stabs at it with Areadbhar. It does not flinch. He jabs Areadbhar through its dense musculature. A roar sounds. It lashes at him. His grip slips from Areadbhar. The beast retreats. Dimitri lunges for Areadbhar. His fingers only brush its handle. It disappears into the fog.

Spitting a curse, he sprints after it. His feet slip and slide in the mud. He doesn’t fall. Magic explodes all around him. Bodies shift in and out of the fog. Some alive. Some dead. Somewhere, another divine beast screeches. And he chases after the moving mountain, following the pulsating light of Areadbhar’s exposed pole.

An ax swipes at him, racking him across the chest. His breath gushes from his lungs. But it doesn’t break his armor. He grabs at the blade. Shatters it in his hands. Ignores the sting. Snatches at the attacker’s head before they can react. Pulverizes bone with a crush of his fingers. The rain washes away the blood and bits of bone caking his hands. The rain washes everything away. Everything but the memories. Had it rained over Duscur? After the bodies fell? Over Garreg Mach? After the empire laid waste? Over Enbarr? After his sister’s corpse had cooled? Had the Goddess wept then? Does she weep now?

Dimitri’s head pounds. He cannot think straight. His legs move in sleek, mechanical rhythm and his arms pump in time with them and it is not Areadbhar, but Edelgard he chases after, sitting atop the beast’s slithering arm as if it were a throne. Dull red light marks her form in the fog, shows the jutting horns of her helmet, but her face is hidden. He shakes his head. Whips his hair across his face. Edelgard is gone. Edelgard has never been. Areadbhar snakes away.

Dimitri continues to run but Areadbhar vanishes. He runs blind. Magic everywhere. The sting of it is acrid in his mouth. Even the rain cannot cleanse the taste of it.

Slithering. Fast and slick. He falls into a squat, throws his hands out at his sides. The beast wraps around his arms. Two very small arms against the massive girth of it all. It squeezes like an anaconda. Squeezes with devastating impact. But Dimitri resists, screaming as he presses against it. Fights from being pulverized. His chest threatens to collapse and his arms feel like splintering and his mind throbs out of this place of rain and death and his left arm buckles from the strain of fighting against the severed muscles of a wound never properly healed and everything hurts hurts hurts.

A sudden blast knocks him sideways and the incessant squeezing ceases. He stumbles, but there is pulsing light in his bleary vision. He swipes at it. Snatches at it with a trembling hand. Pulls it free. Cradles it to his chest. Shakes his head until his vision clears. 

Dimitri is all aches and throbs and agony. But he is alive. Areadbhar is in his hands. And a creature made of the darkest nightmares of man roars before him. Its maw is full of needle teeth and the flashings of broken armor. A blast of magic erupts in its maw, shattering its teeth and eviscerating the tender flesh around them. The beast screeches and showers Dimitri in spittle and shrapnel. And Dimitri charges. Throws his shoulder. Rams into the beast with all his might. 

The beast staggers. Dimitri leaps. Punches Areadbhar through the beast’s skull. It cleaves through the hard bone like a knife through butter. The beast screeches a death knell and lumbers, but Dimitri keeps his boot firm against its snout and jerks Areadbhar around in the tender brain mater again and again and again and again until the beast stills. 

Dimitri kicks at its corpse, spitting on the thing as it lies in the pounding rain. Dimitri swipes his wrist over his forehead. Sweeps his hair back over his skull. He rolls his wrist. And an attacker bursts from the fog. 

The attacker strikes with a lance and Dimitri deflects with Areadbhar, teetering back. The attacker hesitates, dazed from the force of his defense. Dimitri skewers them just as Sylvain lurches in front of him, the Lance of Ruin whistling through the wet to disarm the attacker. Felix glides beneath Sylvain’s reach. Strikes the attacker across the neck. Blood sprays and combines with the rain.

Dimitri pulls Areadbhar free. Lays a hand against the side of his head as he sways. Fighting against the beast has taken a lot out of him, but he will not falter. Not now. There will be time to heal later. There has to be. That matters to him now. He _ wants _to survive, to see the sunrise of another day. 

“Kind of you to join us,” Felix shouts. The rain has pressed his usual mess of hair into a wet mop atop his head. Still, Dimitri can make out his glare easy enough. 

“How many?” Dimitri asks. His voice is raw. The two words make his throat feel like it is bleeding. 

“Can I see through fog?” Felix snaps.

Dimitri nods. It was a foolish question to ask.

The fog shifts and another attacker arrives. Between the three of them, quick work is made of the attacker. Sylvain throws an arm over his brow to block the rain from his eyes and shouts, “They keep coming.”

A relic flashes in the distance. Without a word, they all move for it. Dimitri leads the way. Felix and Sylvain follow. 

“There could more of those fucking _ things_ out there,” Felix shouts. Dimitri knows it is his way of saying, _ Be careful _. 

“Beasts,” Dimitri says.

“Not like any sort I’ve ever seen,” Sylvain shouts. 

They run. Dimitri’s back aches from the strain of constant vigilance. The blurry flare of the relic in the distance only grows fainter. Then, to his left, Dimitri sees a flicker of red. He skids to a halt. Mud sprays from his sudden stop. Felix and Sylvain stumble into his back, but he doesn’t fall and neither do they. He points. 

Somehow, arrows whiz, streaking through the deluge unencumbered and striking indiscriminately. There is a pain in his leg and he knows he has been grazed at the least, struck at the most. Sylvain and Felix yelp. But the attacking vermin will not allow him a moment to examine the injury. Even if they did, he would not consider it. Instinct from years spent getting drunk on adrenaline and surviving wounds that should have been fatal floods his senses.

Two archers leap from the fog, bows at the ready. Dimitri growls. Leaps from a quick shot, but lands too heavily on his injured leg. He drops to a knee. Swipes at one attacker with Areadbhar. Rends their armor. Thoroughly guts them. They fall. Felix slays the other. 

“Keep moving,” Felix shouts, but when Dimitri moves Sylvain and Felix do not follow. He turns. An arrow juts from Sylvain’s thigh, another from his chest. Sylvain flicks at the one in his chest with his finger. It bobs. He says, “Fuck.”

Sylvain topples forward. Felix catches him before he can land in the mud. Sylvain lies heavily against him. Dimitri stares. Waves of adrenaline crest and recede within his chest. He cannot stay here. He must keep moving. But if he leaves, if he leaves and Sylvain dies, he is no better than the attacking horde. Once, he couldn’t have been bothered to care. But he does now. It makes everything so much more complicated. 

Dimitri straps Areadbhar to his back. He opens and closes his hands, gestures with his arms at Sylvain. 

“You’re not serious,” Felix shouts. So, Dimitri rips Sylvain from Felix’s grasp. He shifts Sylvain to carry him bridal style as Sylvain mumbles some unintelligible words of shock.

“Do not let me die,” Dimitri shouts at Felix and then he starts running in direction of the nearest relic. He only hopes it belongs to Ingrid or another ally. He does not let himself hope for more, for _her _ in this mess of mud and blood, though his heart takes up the rhythm of the flashing of the relic in front of him. 

A swordsman barrels into his path. Dimitri barely dodges, spinning and slipping in the mud. Felix engages the swordsman, bashing at them with his Aegis shield. Their nose bursts. Then, their throat. Dimitri runs. Felix follows. 

Sylvain grumbles in Dimitri’s arms, lewd things and demands to be treated properly all made warped and watery from the pummeling rain. Dimitri ignores him. It is a good thing that he is speaking. When he suddenly stops, mid-sentence, it is a very bad thing. 

The flashing relic is still so far off. But muffled sounds of battle are near. Dimitri takes a risk, changes trajectory. His feet nearly slip out from under him as he skitters. Sylvain’s head jostles against his chest. Rainwater collects in his open mouth. 

“What are you doing?” Felix screams. Dimitri does not answer. Sylvain gurgles. 

In the fog fog, Dimitri nearly tramples his King’s Guard when he comes upon them. There are only four. They fight against a divine beast. The beast is on its last legs, thrashing wildly as one of the knights jams their poleax into the beast’s eye. 

Felix enters the fray with a shout and a flurry of slashes. The knights react with shock, but do not cease in their assault alongside Felix. Dimitri envies them. Itches to join the fight as well. Shouts instead, “Healer?”

One of the knights falls back. Acknowledges him with a nod. She eyes Sylvain and curses. She runs her hands over him as they glitter with soft light. 

The divine beast sounds a death knell. Dimitri scowls. The knight continues to work her healing over Sylvain. Felix storms towards him with his sword coated in the blood of a kill that should have been his. 

“Set him down!” Felix shouts. Dimitri hesitates. Felix shouts, “I know that look! Set him down! Go!” 

So, Dimitri does and he runs headlong back into the fog, after the phantom pulsing of the relic. He runs and his head pounds miserably. The rain is constant pressure on his back, thrumming against him with a vengeance. He is so cold and stiff and hurt, but he does not stop. Does not even consider stopping.

And then the fog lifts. 

A chittering laugh rings out over the battlefield. Constance von Nuvelle gloats over a charred body. Her arm twists unnaturally at her shoulder. Yuri stands at her side. His hands glow. He runs them over her broken arm. He shakes his head. Beside them, Balthus grapples with a divine beast. His fists wrap around the monster’s massive fangs. He butts his head against the beast’s snout. He headbutts it again. And again. And again. His plan seems to be to headbutt the beast into submission. Hapi provides support from a distance. She fires bursts of dark magic at the beast’s tail. The magic hits far enough away to avoid striking Balthus as well.

The Ashen Wolves stand assembled in all their might and glory, but the Ashen Demon does not guide them. Across the muddy land, there is no sign of her. Not among the living or the dead.

With the fog gone, the sounds of rain and battle are deafening, louder than even the keening that rockets about his skull. He sees a scattering of bodies in the mud, a few ongoing battles. Another divine beast rages to the west. Ingrid brings the wrath of Lúin upon it. Dedue follows up with a blow from his ax. The beast bellows, but it continues to fight, raking at both of them with its deadly claws.

Nearby, a collection of King’s Guard scramble against a duo of mages who wreak havoc on their line. Felix screams orders from behind them. Sylvain leans heavily against his shoulder. His head lulls.

Dimitri takes a step towards them as his blood roils. But, the back of his neck prickles. He spins. Huffs.

A woman stands, hardly a breath away. She holds no weapons. She wears the long black gown of a noble. She stands without a snatch of armor. She smiles. Her lips are stained black. Her eyes are the solid white of ice.

The woman sways at the waist. She throws her arm up. She looks as if she is inviting him to dance. Her fingers splay. Molten gold flies. It spreads through the rain like silt in a river, snaking and twisting and spreading and growing like something living and breathing. 

Then, Dimitri lives a thousand lives.

He is leaping away and charging with Areadbhar and breathing in the gold and choking on spittle and falling back and raising Areadbhar and swallowing the gold and splitting in two and rocketing forward and slashing with Areadbhar and—

The rain, the gold, _ everything _ freezes around him and he is glued in time, staring wide-eyed at the tendrils of gold racing towards him and the woman standing behind them with her eyes like death. He teeters on the balls of his feet, lurching in any direction that is away, but his momentum does not carry. He cannot breathe. He cannot blink. He can barely think. His thoughts flow like syrup, melding into each other until he thinks only a drone of _ stuck stuck stuck _. He hovers, unable to do anything beyond existing. It is a moment. It feels like forever.

There is sudden light in front of him. A body falls against him. Knocks him to the ground. Mud squelches. Ozone crackles. The world spins. His eye deceives him. Because Byleth is on top of him. Her wet hair in his mouth. Her soaked weight over his chest. Her legs tangled in his. 

Byleth is here and she sits up. She looks full into his face. Her lips part. She breathes wet and heavy. Her hair traces the angles of her face the way his fingers once had. She is the storm’s gift, borne of thunder and lightning. She says, “Stay down.” 

She climbs off of him. She scrambles to her feet. She grabs the Sword of the Creator. She turns soft and phantasmic in its pulsating red light. But, despite the battle and the blood and the rain, he cannot let her run away so quickly. Cannot let her leave again. He shifts to stand, but Byleth whirls. She jabs her heel into the wound the arrow had made on his leg. Tears spring into his eye. He gasps. Byleth snarls, “Stay. Down.” 

Byleth is here and she is _ insane _. 

He has no response. His mouth hangs open. He only stares. She scowls and then she streaks off into the storm. The Sword of the Creator crackles into life over her head, segmenting and lashing at all in her way. 

Dimitri scrambles to his feet. He traces the wake of her destruction. She heads for the mage-woman, who waits patiently halfway across the battlefield. At the mage-woman’s feet lie several of his King’s Guard, their bodies coated in gold. He knows little of magic, but he knows enough to know that the mage-woman is far more dangerous than anything else on the battlefield. And Byleth had known too. Had somehow yanked him from her attack.

He does not understand how she could have known or where she had been hiding. He is not sure he wants to. 

All around him, divine beasts and human rubbish breathe their last, but, ahead of him, Yuri converges with Byleth. Together, they charge the mage-woman. Dimitri runs faster as they make contact in an explosion of light and sound. 

Byleth and Yuri dance around the mage-woman as she slings fire and brimstone at them and Dimitri readies Areadbhar. But a heavy hand slaps against his chest. He halts from the sheer nerve of it. Balthus gawks at him. He says, “Shit.”

Balthus’ hand grows warm on Dimitri’s chest, but he bats it away. Storms towards Byleth and Yuri and the mage-woman. Balthus follows after, but Dimitri spins. He sweeps Balthus’ feet out from under him. A move Byleth had once taught him. Balthus sputters.

Dimitri takes strides towards the fight, but a hand wraps around his ankle. It startles him enough to topple him. He slams into the mud. A healthy dose crams his nose and fills his mouth. He coughs until the cakey texture is free from his tongue. Swipes at his eye until he can see. Dislodges his eyepatch, but he doesn’t care. Fights to stand to the sound of whistling metal and the smell of expended magic. He manages just in time to watch the battle end.

Yuri charges the mage-woman. She whirls on him, setting the ground ablaze beneath his feet. He hits the mud, rolling to avoid the flames, and slashes at her. She dodges, only to impale herself on the Sword of the Creator. The mage-woman’s mouth forms a perfect little o. 

Dimitri watches as Byleth wrenches her relic from the mage-woman’s back. Watches as she stabs the mage-woman again and again and again. Watches as nearly decapitates the mage-woman from the force of her attacks. Watches as Yuri stops her with a single hand on her shoulder. Watches Byleth stiffen. Watches her let the Sword of the Creator lie slack over the mage-woman’s corpse.

And, now that it is all over, Dimitri has lost sense of his teeth. There is only smoke in his mouth, swirling into his throat and racing up into his brain.

He heaves with each breath. The rain soaks to the very core of him, bearing down upon him, seeping into the slit of his mouth and stilting all his speech with the taste of clean skies and spilled heaven. The mutilated body of the mage-woman smokes with foul magic. The mud all around her is splattered with gold. Byleth still stands over her with Yuri at her side. The Sword of the Creator juts from her hand, a band of glowing bone. Her eyes are squeezed shut. She arches her neck to the sky. She drinks the tears of the Goddess.

Dimitri wills her to look at him, to _ see _him. But she doesn’t. When he steps towards her, he falters. He falls to his knees. Areadbhar falls beside him. He cannot hold himself up. Cannot even think of the strain. Wounds, old and new alike, radiate fetid ache throughout his body. Everything hurts. More than it has ever hurt. He cannot breathe. The rain soaks him, chokes him. He sputters, but it does nothing. The sky has made an ocean of his chest. Fish dart between his ribs while coral sprouts from his calcified heart. Collapsing into the mud and muck of a stilling battlefield, he drowns.

And, through it all, the Sword of the Creator glows red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god. Such a looooong chapter lololol!!!  
Where to begin... So, Byleth's back lol. I know it's not exactly the reunion you all were hoping for, but don't fret! There will be some happier times ahead!  
Also, jeez. I hate fight scenes/battle scenes. So many moving parts to consider. But I'm pretty proud of the way it turned out! Hopefully it was worth the very long read ;-;  
I'm gonna say here (and put it in the tags so it's not just me flapping my gums and then not actually sticking to my words) BUT this will be moving to weekly updates for the foreseeable future. I'm hopeful it will continue that way until it's done but that'll all depend on getting a job and updates in the COVID situation and all that other fun stuff :/  
ALSO, I'm hoping to start doing weekly one-shots now that I have a bit more time on my hands so feel free to shoot me requests over social media for anything you'd like to see (within reason. No rape/non-con, pedophilia, incest, etc). I've got a Mercidue one-shot in the works as well an Ashnette (do they have a ship name?? I don't even know ;-;) one. You can find me on twitter @CazBunnyWrites.  
Shout out to MaMinette! You're the best! Thank you so much for your support!!! <3  
I hope you all enjoyed it!! Know that your support and reviews and kudos really mean the world to me!!! I'm so thrilled every update to share this with you all!! <3 <3 <3


	22. Fever Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is little sense to be made of madness

When Dimitri awakens in darkness, he feels no fear. It seems natural to him, to stand in the watery, smoky light of an empty room. He does not remember what has come before or fear for what may come after. He only stands, free of fear and stares into the face of the long dead. She smiles at him, her teeth the brittle white of milk teeth. Her hair is brown and her eyes a full-bodied lavender. She is as he knew her best. He knows it is a dream, in the way dreams have of making themselves known. Still, he asks, “Are you real?” 

Edelgard cocks her head and narrows her eyes. He knows the expression well; she thinks him foolish for asking such a thing.

He scuffs his foot, studies his hands and the thickness of pre-pubescent fat that clings between his fingers. His hands are free of mottled burns and rough scar tissue. They are smooth and soft and pliable like dough.

_He’s in a bad way, _says a voice from above. It is one that he hardly knows, but recognizes all the same. It drips with silky syllables and danger. Edelgard wrinkles her nose. She had never trusted Yuri. But she had never trusted anyone.

_Drag him out of the way. They will send for the bodies._

Another voice. A different voice. Stark and short. Colder and drier than all the silent skeletons in the royal crypts of Fhirdiad.

Nothing hurts, but he thinks it should. Byleth is so far away.

“Can you taste her pain?”

He cannot taste anything, cannot even remember what it is like to taste. Edelgard smiles like she knows, like she is glad for his shortcomings. He could not answer her even if he wanted to. His mouth is full of ash. It coats his tongue and throat.

“It tastes like drowning.”

He does not get a chance to ask her what she means. The world goes dark and he knows nothing except for the ash in his mouth.

* * *

Dimitri awakens to starless night overhead and feathery touches along his face. All of him aches. His thoughts are a fetid virus, radiating heat and fever to soothe the sting of wounds he cannot remember. His pain keeps him dull. He does not lash out or panic. Not when everything hurts. Not when Byleth stares down at him.

Her hair hangs like a veil about her face. She strokes the side of his jaw, the backs of her fingers pressing butterfly kisses to his stubbled skin. Her eyes are endless. She does not smile.

“Open,” she says, but it is her fingers, not her words, that coax his mouth open. He expects she will slip them between his lips and let him suck the honey from her fingertips. But she doesn’t. She brings a strap of leather between his teeth.

“Bite,” she says. And he does. She leans over him, blocks out the moon, puts her hands on his shoulders and he hopes her hands will continue over him, freeing him of clothes and dirt and hurt. He wants to be held. Wants to be loved.

But she doesn’t do anything so gentle. She digs her fingers into the meat of his shoulders and pushes.

“Try to stay still,” someone says, voice low and thunderous. 

There is sudden fire, blazing across his body with cruel intent. It liquefies his bones. Eviscerates his muscles. It burns like the flames of Duscur had burned. His back arches. His fingers cleave canyons in the ground. His screams drown out everything in the world beyond her starless eyes.

* * *

He dreams of Duscur.

Of fire. Death. Blood. Gore.

Attackers like hawks. Their forms marred by billowing black hoods. Their strikes fast and vicious. Their hands like talons, clutching weapons that fizz and flare.

His father’s body, sprouting a fountain of blood where his head is meant to be. He stands tall and proud, like a king, for a moment. His head sways in the wind, hanging by a thread of tendon and skin.

Glenn’s body, curling in on itself like a flower in its death throes. Black blood reaching like tiny hands from the hole in his chest, tracing through the dirt and dust, searching for help.

The King’s Guard, herded together with their heads bowed, praying for all eternity. Knives and spears and axes and lances and swords and arrows prickle from their hunched backs like the quills of a porcupine.

Dedue, huddling beneath a breakage of wood and stone. A knight in the blistering colors of Faerghus screaming at him to crawl out, to embrace the end. 

Dimitri always dreams of Duscur.

* * *

He dreams of Byleth beneath the shade of a willow, leaning against its rough bark. Her armor is dazzling as if she is wrapped in the sun itself. Her hair shifts in the breeze, soft as a chick’s downy feathers.

Byleth talks to Yuri. Their foreheads are a whisper away from touching. There is an apple in her hand, her fingers pale and straining against the bleeding red. When she bites into it, the juice runs down her chin, sticky and sweet.

* * *

Dimitri wakes as he is lifted, ragdoll, into a bed of hay. The night sky swirls in starless majesty overtop him. His head pounds with a painful cadence. His mouth is unbearably dry. He runs his tongue along his teeth, savoring the smooth cut of them against his parched tongue.

Horses knicker. The hay digs into the back of his head. Still, it is comfortable, cushioning the heavy mass of his limbs that extend like amorphous blurs from the heft of his body. He is nothing and he is everything.

Memories ping throughout his skull, sharp reminders of pain and battle.

“We will expect you in Aglovale,” a voice says, sharp and flinty. Ingrid.

“We will be there,” a voice responds, slick and perfumed. Yuri.

He has enough sense to sit up. The world spins overtop of him. A huddled mass stands at the foot of the cart, but he only looks to her. She stands still and stiff. The Sword of the Creator bleeds red light over her shoulder. She steps forward. Lays the flat of her hand over his ankle. He cannot feel her touch, only the weight of it through his armor. She turns away before he can find the strength to call her name. And the cart rolls away with him atop it as the shape of Byleth smears into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi. welp. here it is lmfao. life is literally an unpredictable, wily bastard that loves to make me think I'll have time to actually catch up with the writing of this story only to waggle its finger in my face and say, "uh actually fuck you and your good intentions". I'm hoping to ACTUALLY update regularly but I'VE THOUGHT THAT BEFORE AND THEN SHIT GETS IN THE WAY SO UGHHH.  
Okay, whine fest over. Just needed to get that off my chest I GUESS lol.  
So this is a rather wet and wild chapter (wet as in like bloody big, just wanted to make the joke). It's also really short so :-) Dimitri's a wee bit fucked up from battle so this is the aftermath. Plus, I am a sucker for surreal dream sequences. It is the burden I bear.  
As always, I hope y'all enjoy and lemme know what you think! Next chapter will be more dialogue and more linear.... ish LOL.  
Hope y'all are staying safe and staying sane <3<3<3


	23. Haggard Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not all reunions are happy

Aglovale is a relatively small town with an active port. The port, through which a multitude of goods and peoples pass, sits at the mouth of the bay that encompasses the Rhodos coast and allows access to the rivers of the continent. Though the residential population is of an average size, travelers from all across Fodlan flock to the town in the summer season, enticed by the soft sands and claims of the best seafood on the continent. In fact, Aglovale is so well known for its artisan and delicious seafood, that many travelers forgo the beach altogether and spend their vacations crowding the small crab shacks and shrimp huts dotting the port. The fish market in Aglovale is renowned, boasting the freshest catches this side of the Airmid.

All this being common knowledge that was oft-discussed and dreamed of when the summer drew nigh, Dimitri really doesn’t know why Balthus thought he’d have any luck in scamming the port’s fishmongers into buying the corpse of the tentacled divine beast that had, as Balthus put it, “nearly hugged the balls” off of Dimitri. Or why Balthus feels the need to openly _ bitch _about his failure in the quiet confines of Dimitri’s room.

Dimitri has made it abundantly clear he’d give anything for the brawler to explore the virtues of silence, but Balthus has yet to respect Dimitri’s most recent brush with death, choosing instead to complain about his failed con and the rotting divine beast in the alleyway beside the inn.

Dimitri has only been awake and active for an hour, for the first time in two weeks if Mercedes, who had been hailed from Garreg Mach in the aftermath of the attack, was to be believed. Dimitri couldn’t be sure. Everything, since he had awakened, felt like a twisted, cosmic joke.

First, he had panicked upon awakening, not knowing where he was and barely understanding _who _he was. Then, after she had calmed him in her gentle Mercedes way, Mercedes had explained the situation. Well, what she understood of the situation, which was that an ambush by an unknown enemy had killed two and crippled three of his King’s Guard, that Sylvain had been grievously injured in the ambush but was likely to survive, that Dimitri had sustained a litany of injuries that Mercedes dutifully rattled off and Dimitri politely ignored, that he had been comatose for so long because a poison introduced through one of his many wounds had reacted severely with the medicines she had prescribed and tried very diligently to kill him. Only at the end did Mercedes mention, in _passing, _ that Byleth was back. That he hadn’t hallucinated her. That she had been there, with him. Saved him. Ignored him. _ Hurt _him. He remembers that best—the heel of her boot biting into the chasm of ragged flesh left by an arrowhead on his leg and the bit of leather drawn tight between his teeth when he’d thought she’d embrace him, not hold him still to endure further torment.

Mercedes only stayed long enough to explain the messy bits as best she could, to force a spoonful of sickly-sweet smelling medicine down his throat, and to say she’d been up all night watching him and wanted to stay but was going to pass out if she didn’t leave. So, she left and she sent in her replacement.

Dimitri had hoped for Byleth. He got Balthus. 

“They wouldn’t know fine cuisine if it bit them in the ass,” Balthus says. “Bunch of puffed-up pricks.”

Dimitri leans forward and ignores him, allowing the bumbling brawler and haphazard healer to change the dressing around his chest. Balthus, of course, continues to bemoan his bad luck as his rough hands make quick work of the wrappings keeping Dimitri’s blood soundly within his chest. After Balthus finishes, Dimitri flops back against the uncomfortable, lumpy bed and asks, “Where is everyone?”

“They went after some bandits,” Balthus says with a grumble. “I got stuck with babysitting duty.”

“They all went?”

Balthus shrugs as he takes up the stool Mercedes had once sat on at Dimitri’s bedside. 

“Pretty much. All of ‘em except for that bodyguard of yours. He and Mercie got into it. Guess he hasn’t been sleeping much or something.”

Dimitri grimaces at the use of Mercedes’ nickname coming from Balthus. He had never been much of a fan of the brawler’s betting and greed and couldn’t harbor any respect for him after he, along with the rest of the Ashen Wolves, had spent the war holed away in Abyss. But Byleth had always liked him. Just like she had liked all the Ashen Wolves. 

“Oh, and Sylvain’s still here.”

Right. Dimitri had forgotten all about Sylvain from the lingering shock and pain of his injuries coupled with the all-encompassing knowledge that Byleth was back. Sylvain had been shot right? And Dimitri had… carried him? The memory was as foggy as the battlefield had been. Truly, he could only remember Byleth’s return and the sight of her in the rain over the smoldering body of the mage-woman.

“Is he alright?” 

“Yep. All patched up and healin’.”

Balthus crosses one leg over the other and folds his arms behind his head. He’s made himself far too comfortable. Dimitri now fears he might never leave. But, while he remains…

“What sort of trouble has Byleth gotten herself into?”

Balthus slams forward in his chair, nearly tumbling to the floor before catching himself. He shows all his teeth in a sour-faced grimace and says, “Uh, she’ll probably wanna tell you that herself.”

Dimitri forces his eye closed, trying to squeeze the burgeoning headache away. He doesn’t know why he expected Balthus to be helpful in any way. Thankfully, his question seems to have shaken Balthus enough to silence him. It is a small blessing, but Dimitri will take anything he can get.

In the newfound silence, he mulls over what he remembers of the battle but can only conjure billowing fog, clashing steel, harrowing screams, and unending slithering. The beast, the one he had never seen the likes of before, slips in and out of the shadows of his memory, but his battle with it is hazy. Did he kill it? It seems more likely that he did than he didn’t. And Byleth, she should be there, somewhere in the mire of his memories, but he can’t find her. 

He doesn’t realize he’s asleep until he awakens to the creak of a door. When he cracks open his eye and sees her standing there, Sword of the Creator over her shoulder. She turns to Balthus, a question going unspoken between them, and Balthus shrugs, gesturing her forward. Neither seems to realize he’s awake so Dimitri forces himself to sit up, to stretch up onto his elbows and take her in as best he can. Her face is slick with sweat. Her hands and arms are dirtied from mud and blood and battle. She does not fall upon him with soft kisses and bone-searing hugs. She doesn’t even look at him, looking to Balthus instead, who juts his thumb at Dimitri and says, “Mercedes says he’s still all banged up so…”

Balthus doesn’t finish whatever thought blips within his thick skull. He just stops talking and leaves in awkward haste. Byleth watches him leave, her face solemn like she wants him to stay like she doesn’t want to be here.

But she turns to him and the sight makes him ache everywhere he isn’t already.

“This inn sucks,” she says, droll humor trying and failing to mask the tension. Then, she says, “You nearly died.”

“Mercedes said as much,” he says. It is so awkward, more a reunion of tepid acquaintances than whatever he had thought they were.

“Did she say why you were attacked?”

Dimitri shakes his head, says, “I didn’t need to ask. The continent is still troubled. I am only surprised it has taken this long for something to happen.”

Then, he can only think to ask her to sit and she does. The mattress dips beneath her weight.

“You have questions,” Byleth says.

“Are you safe?”

Byleth only stares. Then, she laughs, a little puff of air, and shakes her head.

“Months without a word,” she says. “And you ask after my safety.”

“I have thought of nothing less,” he says, carefully, as the words fall heavy off his tongue. “Through the perils and the unknown, at the risk of my life and my kingdom, I have thought of nothing less.”

Byleth looks into her lap, into the little lines and wrinkles that form around her fingers. He wonders what she sees there, what destiny lies in her heartlines.

“You think me cruel. You are owed that. Much more than that.”

He wants to argue. To make her see how much she has hurt him. But he doesn’t. He takes her hand in his, drags his fingers over the callouses on her palm.

“You are here.”

Her nose scrunches. She keeps her hand in his, but it is meek and limp—no livelier than a skinned fish. She nods.

“Why?”

“You nearly died,” she says again, repeating herself and gliding her gaze over his face. Then, she offers the whisper of a smile. “And Ingrid threatened to string my guts across Fhirdiad if I did not.”

Dimitri scowls. His fingers twitch and Byleth’s hand slips from his. She curls it around the other in her lap, lacing the fingers within each other. It is her hands, her delicate, woven fingers, that he stares at as he says, “Then you would not have stayed of your own accord.”

“You misunderstand—” she starts, but he cannot stand another prettied excuse.

“I understand well enough.”

Her voice is barren as she asks, low and slow, “What would you have me say?”

“Say why the Hyrm Mountains fell,” he demands. The steel of the crown ekes into his voice without intention. He has taken the tone often with subjects and advisors alike, but never with her. And he knows she notices for her eyes flash like the slink of an uncoiling viper. When she voices an answer, it is well-rehearsed.

“Their base lay beneath the mountains. The people who seek to destroy Fodlan. Spit in the face of the Goddess. Edelgard’s allies.”

Memories of hooded mages and blank-eyed warriors stoke the fires raging in his skull. She knew where they dwelled. Wiped them out herself. Couldn’t even send him a word of warning. Dimitri’s hands ache. He wants to break something, to feel the tension build and build within a bolt of metal or strip of wood until it shattered. But Byleth is talking, answering his questions—there will come time to act on his anger later. Besides, just keeping his head aloft causes a dreadful panging between his brows.

“What of the mage in the fog?”

The woman of gold and death. The woman Byleth had saved him from, scooping out of her reach before he had even realized the threat. Her uncanny sense for danger is just another of her mysteries. 

“A survivor. Most of them survived. Few fell beneath the mountain. Thales made sure of that.”

There is distance in her voice, some memory she has yet to speak of and likely never will. Dimitri pursues another vein of questioning. 

“Thales?” he asks.

“Arundel,” she answers and the sheets rip between his fingers from a sudden, lurching clench. Feathers and cotton peek from the freshly bared guts of the quilt. He breathes hard and heavy as his brow furrows in pain and betrayal and horrible, moldering distrust. 

“I suspected for a long while.”

“Yet you kept it to yourself,” he says. It hurts to say, like prodding at an open wound. And she does not respond so he presses, further. The words bleed, rushing and mushing over one another.

“You knew this entire time. Knew every single gods-damned thing. Knew and didn’t tell me."

“It’s not that simple.”

Dimitri rubs at his eye. His anger is exhausting. Everything hurts and nothing makes sense. Byleth is here. She is alive. Yet, neither fact brings him any comfort. 

“I can’t do this. Not with you.”

“The threat is within your reign, embedded in it. To involve you so intimately in it—”

His frustration surges, cresting into a bitter, shouted interruption. 

“Damnit Byleth! You didn’t hesitate to involve Yuri! Claude!”

Byleth’s head droops ever lower, but, when she speaks it is without a drop of emotionality to her voice. 

“They have resources you do not.”

His words come fast and brittle, hurled with all the force he can muster. 

“Do they also endear your affections?”

She doesn’t look at him. Just stares off in that vacant way. His rage sputters, drowned in the sudden, gushing horror of her silence.

“Answer me.”

“It was easier this way.”

After a long while, she adds, “Easier for me.”

The addition doesn’t do a damned thing to unknit the wound of her words in his belly. Mere days ago he would have given the world for her. Now, he’s not sure he’s ever truly known her, has only entertained himself with thoughts of knowing her, of making her saint and savior and lover and ignoring the dark, festering things beneath that look so much like his own ghosts. 

Then, she says, “I did not want it to be this way. You know that, don’t you?”

He doesn’t know. He never knows. There is much she doesn’t say. Dimitri closes his eye, squeezes. It shouldn’t hurt this badly. She hasn’t said anything he hasn’t already suspected.

When he starts laughing, he’s not even sure how his spiraling heartache spawns such mirth. Though it isn’t mirth and his laugh isn’t much of a laugh—it’s practically a death rattle. He covers his face with his hands, rubs at his cheeks with his palms.

“You keep so much from me, how could I know a damned thing?”

He wants her to break. To scream and swear and say she hates him or doesn’t love him or never loved him or anything. Anything other than this blunt fucking _ nothingness. _

But she doesn’t do anything. She only sits there, teetering on the edge of the bed like she might tumble off with the slightest breeze, and stares into the mortar.

He nearly snaps, nearly yells, but the heavy draw of her breath in even in and out gives him pause. The breathing technique is one he’s attempted himself. A calming technique.

It hurts, raising the sore, atrophied muscles, but he does it. He does it for her. He draws her against him, the stiff, unrelenting mass of her, to nestle into his chest. She doesn’t say anything and neither does he. He just holds her, presses his lips to the side of her forehead, breathes in her sweat, and her stink and her pain.

And he feels, painfully, stupidly, entirely like a monster for yelling at her and for pushing her to this point. But she stays.

Amid the hurt and the ache and the secrets and the lies, she stays, even if only for a little while. And he doesn’t press her to speak or to explain. And they stay like that, her wrapped in him, in silence, as the argument festers. 

Eventually, when her breaths have turned light and little, he swallows the lump in his throat to ask, “What will you do now?” 

Truly, he wants to know if she intends to leave again on the hunt of some unknown enemy, but the question seems too crass to ask. No matter how she has hurt him, he cannot bring himself to be any crueler than he has already been. 

“Soldiers and requisitions must be petitioned and a defending force mounted.”

She mumbles into his chest. Her body is tense against his, but she doesn’t move. Perhaps she will stay. Perhaps she will permit him this one small comfort. 

“Against what?”

“They haven’t told you,” she says, bluntly without the pretense of a question. 

“I have not been awake long,” he says. Byleth hums and the sound reverberates through his chest like the purr of an affectionate cat might.

“Nemesis has risen,” she says, and then she says no more, laying against him and falling into slumber before he can cobble together the words to ask her just what exactly that string of insanity means. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whasssssssssup.  
So today may or not be the anniversary of 3H release? Wild if true.  
I don't have too much to say about this chapter. Dimitri's fucked up. Byleth's lying and evading is finally catching up to her with some pretty devastating consequences.  
The end is in sight for this fic which is just... insane TBH. I've decided to pare back a new arc that would come after all the loose ends are more or less tied up which puts the chapter count much lower. When I first set out to write this fic, I had much different visions of how this fic would end, but the way its developed just hasn't been along the same route. Which is totally not a bad thing, just means some things have to change. TBH I may or may not be pursuing ANOTHER dimileth fic that would be like 27ish chapters that combines a bunch of cut material from this and my other adventures and thoughts into one big thing so... we'll see.  
I hope y'all enjoy and, as always, feel free to drop your thoughts in the comments! I love love love talking to y'all!


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